To review, the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. homebrewing club was founded in September of 1990, and its members found a reliable home base in New Albany at Rich O’s BBQ, which originally was launched by two of Sportstime Pizza founder Rich O’Connell’s dazed and confused cronies. As expected, they quickly lost interest, and O‘Connell’s daughter Amy took over. These were the modest beginnings from which the Public House’s beer-focused future success derived.
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Many of the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. members already had an inkling of what beer could be, and we grew together. Word of mouth never goes out of fashion, and there is no finer definition of “symbiotic” than the relationship between club and pub during the 1990s. Looking back from the vantage point of 2023, I’m happy to note that an overwhelming majority of my friendships from the early nineties remain intact. We’ve stood the test of time, and I consider myself fortunate.
Meanwhile, outside the friendly confines at 3312 Plaza Drive, my own plans to teach English in Czechoslovakia were alive and well, as slated to begin in the autumn of 1991 and extend into 1992. The impending trip was made possible by opportunities coming seemingly from nowhere after the disintegration of the East Bloc in 1989-90, and the accompanying (reluctant) retreat of Soviet hegemony in East-Central Europe.
Overall the post-WWII global “settlement” forged by the victors, as characterized by the Cold War between competing –isms, was collapsing. Outside of Europe, Communist-cum-capitalist China was poised to fill a global power vacuum via economic (as opposed to political) reforms, and the Middle East remained a turbulent setting impossible to ignore owing to petroleum-dependency.
Lamentably, the “Third World” tended to exist outside our stunted fields of vision, but why would Americans worry? In 1992 political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously posited the “end of history” and the final triumph of Western-style democracy (Read: capitalism). Fukuyama couldn’t have been more wrong; after all, how could history end when the craft beer revolution was just getting started?
Such was the tumultuous backdrop to my pedantic ambitions.
As F.O.S.S.I.L.S. thrived and the Sportstime Pizza family business evolved, I often could be spotted standing off to the side, trying my best to determine a future, both personally and professionally, without making any truly binding decisions about either.
All the while, hovering like a spectre over my daily existence, was the nagging fear that my approaching overseas teaching gig would be the last foreign journey for a good while. Forget the wide expanse of human civilization—history might well be ending for me. I’d return from Europe some time in 1992, and probably be compelled to do something about my life at the tender age of 32.
Until that future moment of truth, living for the day seemed an excellent strategy, had not a whole new set of complications intervened, for in August of 1990, Iraq seized Kuwait.
For the next few months, there was a nagging uncertainty to everything, because all the geopolitical signs pointed to the United States intervening in a situation that easily might have developed into World War III. It didn’t, but for a while the contingencies were frightening. The Gulf War played out as I prepared to get out (if possible).
First came Desert Shield, an autumn and winter military buildup undertaken by America and its coalition of 38 other willing nations. This was followed in February and March of 1991 by the launch of Desert Storm, a mercifully brief offensive that resulted in the defeat of Iraq’s forces and the restoration of Kuwaiti sovereignty, though not the toppling of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, meaning that ten years later, we got to go through it all over again, albeit it with a different, considerably more stunted Bush in charge.
It was a relief in more ways than one that Desert Storm resulted in a quick first-round knockout of the Iraqi military. It is tempting to say in retrospect that the brief war made little impact on our lives in Kentuckiana, but this was true only insofar as one wasn’t a soldier on active duty or in the military reserves, many of whom were called back to participate in the operations.
The soldiers, reservists and their families absolutely made sacrifices that the rest of us didn’t, and we all knew someone who was highly impacted by the Gulf War. I tried not to lose sight of this in the years to follow.
Still, in the main, daily life—including beer drinking, homebrewing, pizza-making and our various other nickel-and-dime real-time diversions—proceeded with nary an interruption, although I’d be lying if I didn’t concede to being selfishly worried (read: abjectly panic-stricken) that a protracted planetary conflict might prove disruptive to the projected teaching excursion.
Ironically, in some ways I was missing the point entirely, at least in a more geographically specific sense. Desert Storm’s understandably American-centric newspaper headlines pushed increasingly violent episodes from rapidly fragmenting Yugoslavia to the periphery of both consciousness and the pages of the scandal sheets. The Balkan nation teetered near implosion on a razor’s edge, and a quick glance at the map showed that it was situated much closer to Czechoslovakia than Kuwait.
I avoided thinking about those ripple-effect ramifications until arriving in the city of Košice in September of 1991, to find locals there actively soliciting clothing, food and medicine for people displaced by the burgeoning Yugoslav civil war. It turned out that the non-aligned Yugoslavs had been supportive to Czechs and Slovaks seeking refuge when Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968. Indeed, memories are long in that part of the world.
However, the Gulf War was short, and the speed of Iraq’s collapse put most of my doubts to rest. By the spring of 1991, I had my formal orders from Education for Democracy, the grassroots organization placing English speakers into institutional settings (schools, hospitals and businesses) to serve, in essence, as handy on-site Westerners, to teach conversational English as best we could, but just as importantly, to serve as living, breathing cultural reference points amid the post-communist reshuffle.
As I was surprised to learn in September, there were a great many residents of Košice who had not ever spent appreciable time with an American. Although my pretensions as an aspiring Europhile were considerable, applicable teaching credentials were minimal; fortunately, performing the role of a token American wasn’t very difficult at all.
However, it was harder to accept being posted to eastern, isolated Košice – at least in the beginning. I was only vaguely familiar with Košice, hadn’t been anywhere close to it, and all along entertained the absolute certainty that I’d be working a few blocks down the street from the Pilsner Urquell brewery in Plzen, in westernmost Bohemia, a short jaunt by rail from Bavaria’s wonders.
Truthfully, being an hour from Hungary by train, and a morning’s bus trip from the Ukraine, hadn’t once entered my mind. But Košice was a matchless gift, and the best possible outcome. The city and region proved utterly fascinating, ideally mirroring my interests and temperament. In the spring of 1991, I stopped into the public library, read a few items about Košice, and realized that it really didn’t matter where EFD deposited me.
No regrets whatever; I made the right choice.
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I left Indiana in mid-July to meet cousin Don in Austria. He’d breezed through New Albany in May to see his mother before leaving for Europe, and we had conferred over beers, setting a date and time to link up in front of the Vienna Opera House, and exchanging likely hotel contact information.
Six weeks later we kept our appointment right on time at the designated street corner, without worry or incident. It’s truly amazing what could be accomplished in those prehistoric times, without text messaging, e-mails or Twitter.
Prior to departure, I phoned my contact in Košice: Dr. Robert Roland, whose voice over a crackly connection sounded exceedingly Carpathian. During the post-Velvet Revolution period of re-organization, Robert was elevated from the nephrology department to serve as chief of Košice’s teaching hospital, where I’d be instructing doctors, nurses and administrators in conversational English. His command of English was quite good. A target date was set, and upon arrival I was to call him again to arrange a ride from the train station.
There’d been minor logistical challenges in preparation, given that I’d be needing more clothing for the extended stay in Košice than during the travel weeks preceding arrival. I also wanted to take English language books for use by my prospective students, which I collected from local teachers.
EFD had advice for the latter, as the US Postal Service at the time offered an incredibly inexpensive international shipping rate for books packed into a large, seemingly military-issue canvas duffel bag and priced by the pound. The books, padded with needed clothing, had been shipped long before I left for Vienna, along with a box filled with cassettes; I guessed that a boom box of some sort would be available for purchase in Košice. When the time came, I found an affordable South Korean model, and its radio would become a lifeline.
There was also the matter of doing something about my car, a 1980 Chevrolet Monza. It outlived my departure, but only barely (1).
With the various housekeeping tasks vanquished, it was time to formulate an itinerary for fifty days of pre-assignment roaming. The planning for this period reflected a change in methodology. Previously when plotting itineraries, beer generally played second fiddle to my existing obsessions about European history, culture and prevailing Cold War realities.
Beer and breweries obviously were welcomed, but they didn’t wag the dog. Beginning in 1991 and continuing for the following 15 years, beer became the dog. This being the pre-craft era, what it implied in practice is that I took to concentrating travels on places that had brewing traditions, primarily in northern Europe.
Consequently, the two weeks that Don and I spent traveling together in 1991 could have been lifted directly from the beer writer Michael Jackson’s personal notebooks. It went something like this:
- Austria: Vienna
- Germany: Munich, Aying, Regensburg, Bamberg, Nuremburg, Bayreuth, Frankfurt
Don then flew home from Frankfurt, and I set off to visit friends. Obviously, there was ample beer to be sampled in these environs, too.
- Denmark: Copenhagen
- Germany: Berlin, Potsdam, Greifswald, Hiddensee (island), Peenemünde, Lauchhammer, Leipzig, Meissen
- Dresden
The obscure Eastern German (former GDR) locales came as the result of being guided by Suzanne, my friend from the FRJ camp in 1989. After Dresden came Czechoslovakia, with four days spent joyfully revisiting Prague, and then at last the long train ride to Košice began, which I believe came around September 6.
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NOTES
(1) The following was written in the spring of 1991, and this archaeological record offers proof that (a) I cannot be trusted to clean and maintain personal possessions irrespective of their expense, and (b) it was my habit to drink beer while driving during the 1980s. Nolo contendere, and all that jazz. I wish I hadn’t. As stated earlier in this series, the older I’ve become, vastly less of such I’ve done. But this changes nothing in the long run.
As many of you know, the era of the famous 1980 Chevy Monza has come to an end. The “Rogmobile’s” title has been signed over to Amy, and I’ve begun to drive the 1985 Ford previously owned by my parents. Ten and a half years! Things will never be the same for me.
Sunday, April 21 was the day of reckoning. Amy initially refused my magnanimous gift owing to its filthy, not-cleaned-since-Mondale-ran-for-President condition, but she agreed to help scrub the heirloom, so we took Shop-Vac and Armour-All in hand to attempt a last-ditch cleaning. The effort soon turned into a page from the Archeology I text as we dug through mounds of debris.
A partial accounting of what we found in the 1980 Monza:
78 bottle caps (imported)
12 bottle caps (domestic)
2 Grolsch swing-cap bottles (empty)
41 pull tabs
1 Hacker-Pschorr ½ liter bottle (empty)
5 empty beer cans, various
1 full Stroh’s can (pre-1989 golden label)
10 empty Coors Extra Gold cans in original carton
4 flattened beer case boxes
2 bottle openers
3 huggies (water sports design)
1 plastic beverage holder, attached beneath window
13 cigar stubs
2 Bic lighters (dry)
1 shredded Redbirds baseball ticket (July, 1984)
1 1981 Courier-Journal sports page (September 14)
2 Heinken bar mats
2 Henninger coasters
1 styrofoam case insert from Keller-Geister wine
Tears filled my eyes as we sifted through these compelling remnants of days gone by and as I attempted to breathe through the abundant dust and cigar ash clouds that were raised by the cleansing action of the Shop-Vac. I pondered the story behind each rusted Guinness cap and each stray Caribbean Round wrapper.
My soulful reverie was interrupted only once, when the whining of the Shop-Vac told me that the hose was clogged. I took a piece of wire and gouged out carpet tufts, singed tobacco leaves and crumpled liquor store receipts dating back to college days.
I returned to the memories: Road trips, conversations, listening to the Who before the stereo died in ’82, and above all the endless consumption—unwise in light of what I know today, but a historical fact nonetheless.
Finally, poignantly, Amy settled behind the wheel and started to pull the Monza out of my parents’ driveway, to the right, toward Georgetown. The car lurched left, toward Lanesville, in the direction of the K & H, and suddenly I remembered that the automatic pilot had not been disengaged.
I hesitated a moment before snipping the wires, but then it occurred to me that the beery memories attached to the Monza, while cherished and not to be forgotten, were those of a previous life, one that came before my conversion to real beer and to the principles and the worldview that preface the lifestyle of the discerning drinker.
It doesn’t take away from the fondness with which I recall those evenings of 12-packs and revelry, often every night, but it does serve to remind me of how far I, and we, have come. I enjoy beer as much as ever, and it’s the real thing now, not the swill that passes for beer in America.
It’s time to move on, to learn and to grow as a person, to appreciate the things I have now, to cherish my friends and fellow brewers and to live a balanced life like the Bavarians do: A beer for every season, and a season for every beer.
Maybe I’ll be able to keep the Ford clean and not have to go through all this again in 10 and a half years.
[…] Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Thirty-One: Euro beer travel 1991, as history ends and begins again. […]
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