Remembrance of things Pabst

I remember when I was a kid my dad loved to go out with his friends on a Friday night. All of his old buddies from the army and a couple of neighborhood guys would go to the bar for a few beers. The beers cost about a quarter then and you could get your load on for about five bucks in the early sixties. It was Schlitz and Reingold and Ballentines and Budweiser was considered a premium beer. They would got to local joints like Toomeys on the corner of Degraw St and Court. That was a real old time Irish joint like this picture. Sawdust and spit on the floor and hard boiled eggs and farts. Old school.

But the one place they loved was Gussies. Which we always called Scuzzies because it was so filthy. But it was big shit because they made pizza in half ass pizza oven in the back room. So you could have a pie while you where slopping down about twenty beers. They went there almost every Friday night for fifteen years from about 1960 to 1975. Then some of the guys had moved away from Brooklyn or where too busy so they only came out once or twice a year. So the old man switched to hanging out at the Knights of Columbus.

I used to like to hang out in those bars when I was the age he was then. I mean they were different bars but they were the same if you know what I mean. Less farting but other problems like drugs and shit like that. But it was still a lot of fun to hang with you buddies on a Friday night and laugh and tell stories and have a few drinks and bullshit.

But that is all in the past for me now. I never hang out anymore. I would rather sit with the wife and have some wine and cheese and relax and talk about the day. We often go out with friends or customers and sit and relax. I gave up the drinking life much like my dad did. Of course I am fifty three now and just about the age he was when he first got sick. He died at fifty six much before his time. So I can see a lot of things the way he must of seen them back in the day.

Every once in the while I have a fleeting urge to go into the pub for a few beers. But it goes away quickly.

But I will hoist one for you Daddio.