Time for another newsletter, it is simply amazing to me how fast the summer and these newsletters go by. For those that are unaware, the Schells Brewery celebrated their 150 th anniversary the weekend of September 17 th and 18 th. The Border Batch chapter was asked to have a display set up at the celebration and of course, the chapter accepted the invite. The week before at Stubiefest, we did a“ dry run” of the chapter display, just to see what needed to be improved or changed. A few ideas were tossed out, such as, putting out some free beer cans as“ seed” to help kick start those interested in collecting.
Saturday the 18 th arrived and that was the day for our display. We needed to have our booth set up by 9:30 am and we had no problems there. As luck would have it our display booth was right across from the beer stand, so we did not have to walk far to enjoy some Schells beer. I had about 300 beer cans from the 1980’ s gathering dust in boxes and decided to put those cans out as freebies. I put a limit of 2 beer cans per person and by the end of the day all 300 or so cans were gone! Wow! We also did a flyer on the history of the Border Batch along with info on the BCCA and the North Star chapter.
Those manning the booth were, Tom & Judy, Stubie & Lori, Teri & Charles and of course myself. All of us spent the day from 11 am to 5 pm answering every question you could think of, about breweriana and beer in general. Since I like to talk about beer, this day was my podium and all the world a stage, I personally had a blast. Not sure how many people came thru but, I did hear there was somewhere around 4000 people that entered the brewery grounds. There were brewery tours, museum was open, gift shop, old time bands and a very LOUD cannon that rattled my teeth loose. I would certainly say
that the Border Batch display booth was a resounding success. We did not pick up any new members that day but, that is fine. At least we got plenty of information out and in my view that is all you can do.
I had one lady ask about Pabst cans. So I showed her a very old 1930’ s Pabst can from my collection and she just flipped out. She wanted to buy it, but when I told her the price that sorta damped her enthusiasm. The other issue was that our son Charles, got stung by a bee on his eyelid that day. He survived and all is well, although it wrecked his afternoon. Plenty of good will was handed out that day and I know that in the future it will be returned.
For us this year, the Border Batch events have been an absolute whirlwind of fun and good times. The people, places and friends made are just too numerous to recount them all. I guess one of our favorite moments was at the chapter meeting at the Anderson home on Lura Lake. The pontoon ride, the Amp car, beer, camping and just plain good times, and the sunset that still is in my mind. We sat on the dock and watched that multi colored“ snocone” fade out of sight that evening. All was right with the world.
Instead of a quote, I’ ll end with this nonsense. I just recently found out that the month of October is Squirrel Awareness month. I don’ t make this stuff up. Go put it in your search engine. Nuts!!! Till next time,
Jay Martin # 16605.