Coasters & Boots & Beer

Oh, my

Through the decades, we’ve had this huge explosion of micro beers. Sometimes it seems like everyone out there is opening a new brewery, putting their creations on the market. There’s guys like my friend Ed, now let me tell you, Ed loves a crazy beer, the bitterer the better.

That was never my thing. Give me a cheap old Rainier or Budweiser, and I’m happy. If I’m feeling really fancy, maybe a Negra Modelo. Better yet, let’s just do it right and have some Knob Creek neat.

Now that’s a hat!

But there is one thing about this microbrew revolution that I do really enjoy.

The coasters.

The really creative cardboard coasters that all these small breweries distribute to bars in order to advertise their beers. A lot of them are really high art, reflecting the way in which these brewers see their beers.

I collect them, bring them home to use, to protect the furniture.

Recently we discovered that the new grandbaby likes to chew on them. She’s got no teeth, so she doesn’t make much progress eating them, but they sure get mighty drooly. Alas, her mother and grandmother tell me that babies eating coasters is a bad thing, so apparently I shouldn’t be giving them to the kid.

Anyway, back to the story at hand.

The bottom line is, I think these creative, artistic coasters are great things.

And, I learned that one can have these things printed for almost nothing. Full color, printed on both sides, something like eight cents each.

So, when I became Grand Master a few years ago, I had my friend Andre make up about a bazillion of them for me.¹ I thought it was a great idea. Everyplace that serves drinks of any kind, alcoholic or not needs coasters to set them on, and that includes all of our Masonic Temples. I carried stacks of these things around with me, dropping them off as I traveled.

But holy smokes, did I ever catch hell for it from my friends!

Apparently having coasters made with one’s smiling face and name upon them is worthy of vast mockery. They still tease me, all these years later.

Yesterday, I embarked on a quest to buy a can opener.

Now this requires a bit of back story.

You see, long ago, when I first met the woman who is now my wife, I was invited over to her grandmother’s house for a big dinner. Grammy and Melinda were in the kitchen, supposedly cooking. But that isn’t what they were actually doing. Nope, instead of cooking they were in the kitchen bickering.

Bickering about how to use the old countertop electric can opener. The tricks one must employ to keep it from dropping the can, spilling the contents everywhere. Me, I was in the living room, listening to all this go on. Because in Grammy’s view, women did the cooking, men sat in the living room and waited for dinner to be served.

All this struck me as a wee bit nuts. So, I left.

I got in my truck, drove a few blocks, and bought a new can opener.

From that day on, I was A-OK in Grammy’s book.

But, here’s the thing.

It is seemingly impossible to buy a functional can opener in the United States today.

We live in Grammy’s house now, but without the can opener I bought that day, because it soon broke. Then we bought another, and it soon broke. Then instead of going to a regular store, we went to one of those really fancy cooking stores and bought a really high end can opener. Soon enough, it broke.

The other day, I was cooking dinner, the can opener was dead, so I was out in the kitchen butchering the lids off the cans with some old time bottle opener.

What’s the problem?

Well, the little gears strip. Because the metal they are made out of is too soft. Because large American corporations have moved so much manufacturing overseas and allowed quality control to become nothing but an afterthought.

But, while I was brutalizing the cans, to get at the olives inside, I was thinking to myself. I was thinking that when I was a little kid, every house had a can opener, that was probably decades and decades old, and that never broke.

I resolved to head to the junk store to find a used 1960’s can opener that would solve the problem forever.

Yesterday afternoon, the quest began.

And I found the old time can opener. One dollar and nine cents with tax.

But then I had to celebrate my success!

Our city has a really huge Western Wear store. Really huge, mountains of stuff, been here for a long time. But, they carry low end lines. Not the premium stuff.

A year or two ago, our city got a second Western Wear store. It’s small, and most of its inventory is geared towards women, but the stuff they do carry is really good. High quality stuff that will last for decades.

More recently, maybe because there isn’t a huge market for high end cowboy clothes, they took part of their store and turned it into a bar. A bar with cigars!

I’d not been in the place since the bar opened, so to celebrate my conquering of the can opener problem forever I decided to stop in and have a beer.

Well, you know how that went.

While I should have been nursing my beer, I was looking around, and I saw a really, really beautiful pair of boots. And I checked them out and found them to be of great quality. And the lady assured me that she had them in my size.

Long ago, when I was in High School, I worked in a high end boot shop. High end cowboy and work boots. So I learned what makes a quality boot, and what is pretty garbage.

And virtually all cowboy boots today are garbage made overseas. They look pretty, but that’s all they are. The great old names, Tony Lama, Justin, Nocona, all the rest, junk now.

There are still some good makers, but lesser known. Lucchese (some lines) and Rios Of Mercedes are two.

But, most are junk.

Anyway, this pair of boots I was eyeballing is from a new company down in Nocona Texas (actually located in the old Nocona Boots factory) called Fenoglio Boot Company. I’d read good things about this new outfit, and the boots I had in hand were clearly of superior quality, so I worked a deal and they came home with me.

At some point, I was sitting there, sipping my beer, wearing my new boots, and chatting with the lady bartender.

What did I see, but one of our newest Masons, staring up at me.

From my coaster.

His picture, and his name, looking up at me!

Our new Brother, Chris Guenther is an exceptional musician and the coasters were there to advertise an upcoming appearance at that bar/store.²

All of this is a really long way of saying that I am now, no longer, the only Mason ever to have his mug plastered on coasters. So ya’ll gotta stop picking on me now!

1. If you want Masonic gear that is far superior in quality and design to the ordinary, Brother Andre at Ink Nutz is your man. I wear his clothing every single day, and have done so for many years.

https://inknutz-masons.square.site/

2. You can listen too, and buy Chris’ music at the link below. Give him a listen, you’ll like it!

https://www.chrisguenthermusic.com/