Couldn't find a damn thing wrong with it. Put it back together, and it works fine. Kinda felt guilty about keeping it, so I brought it back to him. "There you go. All fixed." Didn't think anything of it.
Another week passes, and I'm riding around on the tractor, and he runs over with a twelve-pack of beer. "Got this in Baltimore. Can't get it around here", he says. "I think you'll like it", and hands me National Bohemian.
Never heard of him.
Tastes familiar, very macro-brew, vaguely Budweiserish. And then I look at the label: G. Heileman Brewing Company, Milwaukee Wisconsin. It's familiar because it's Old Style, the beer of my youth.
Couple years back, my brother called me very distressed, and showed me a newspaper article about how Old Style's new brand strategy was going to be to go upscale - be an ironic hipster beer like PBR has positioned itself. And as a part of this strategy, they were raising their prices. It wasn't going to be the official beer of construction workers anymore, it was going to be the beer of weedy-looking iPad-wielding fuckwads.
I dunno if "National Bohemian" is a part of this branding strategy, and if it is, I dunno if this is the ironic hipster beer or the cheap mass-market construction-worker beer. But I do know that this is fucking Old Style, and apparently it's available in Baltimore.
I hope it ain't the ironic hipster beer, because then it'll cost fifteen bucks a twelve-pack. I hope it's the construction-worker beer. Because then, it'll be six bucks a twelve-pack, and it'll be economical for me to drive up to Baltimore and fill up the truck bed with it.
