P A G E 2 B O R D E R B A T C H B R E W I N G S
Wow, it’ s hard to believe that close to 30 years ago a small group of beer can collectors met on Shellrock Lane in Glenville, Minnesota at the home of Bob and Nona Vierkant to discuss starting a new beer can collecting chapter. The initial idea was to form a chapter to take up the slack between our neighbors to the North, the North Star Chapter and our neighbor to the South, the Hawkeye Chapter. Since we had a close proximity to New Ulm, we decided to christen our chapter the Schell’ s Border Batch. Present at that formation meeting were Bob and Nona Vierkant, Herb and Pat Krause, Ed Shannon, Jay and Margie Smith, Kevin Savick and myself with my wife by my first marriage Susan. Bob had of course done his homework and had all the requirements from the BCCA to start a new chapter. Bob then became the first President( since it was his idea) and I became the Vice President. Well as the saying goes, if you keep something around long enough, sooner or later it will come back into fashion.
At the Schell’ s Christmas party in New Ulm after a steady diet of Grain Belt Premium and several antique beers, I approached Tom and Jay and mentioned that I’ d like to become more involved in the chapters proceedings again. I figured what the hell, I just had recently retired from the Winnebago Fire Department and now had some extra time on my hands. I figured being an officer of the chapter couldn’ t be any worse than running into burning buildings when everyone else was running out, right? No way would they remember my offer by the following morning, right? Well evidently they weren’ t nearly as full as I was and before I could say Cheers, I was the new VP of the chapter. Cool.
Most everyone knows me but to those who don’ t, allow me to introduce myself. I live in Winnebago Minnesota with my wife of 31 years Susan. I’ ve been collecting beer stuff since the early 70’ s and completely started collecting Hamm’ s Beer Breweriania in the late 70’ s. I own and operate Miner Auto Service in Winnebago and my wife sells drugs at Zitnak Pharmacy in Blue Earth. We love to have visitors and welcome any and all if you’ re in the area to tour the Bear’ s Den. There’ s always a cold one in the frig and plenty of music out of my 14 jukeboxes scattered around the house and garage. I also welcome any and all concerns you may have on the chapters activities, as we’ re all in this together.
Last but not least, my hats off to Tom Terwilliger for his past leadership that basically brought this chapter back from the grave and made it one of the most fun chapters in the BCCA. It’ s going to be a fun year-see ya at the upcoming shows.
Steve Miner BCCA # 12802