Beer Stories

This is my version of the Hymn to Ninkasi, written from three different translations / interpretations of the original Sumerian. Instead of a traditional hymn form, I used Wickado G (pattern of 4,5,7,6,5,5,3 syllables in each stanza).

Ninkasi is the Sumerian Goddess of Beer and Brewing, and this hymn dates back to nearly 2000 years before Christ. It contains the earliest known recipe for beer. Some say it’s the Holy Beer.

Ninkasi

Crystal clear womb
Water lifegiver
The earth and mother-goddess
Ninhursaja by name
Cared for Ninkasi
On her arrival
Water born

Towering walls
Grand as canyon cliffs
Ninkasi completes them
To protect the city
Standing on the shores
Of the sacred lake
Called Abzu

The great Enki
Lord of deep waters
He did father Ninkasi
From his love of Ninti
Queen of the Abzu
And she gave to him
A daughter

Smooth and golden
Handle in her hands
Hefting the big dough shovel
She mixes the bappir
Beer-bread with honey
Sweet aromatics
And passion

The bappir goes
In the big oven
Hot with the fire of the gods
Ninkasi bakes it well
Then puts in order
The piles of hulled grains
Safely kept

Ninkasi she
Then waters the malt
That she’s spread across the earth
Her tigers stand guard
Even potentates
Are forbidden from
Trespassing

She soaks the malt
In a holy jar
While the waves they surge and ebb
The cooked mash she then spreads
Across large reed mats
So that they may cool
And be ready

Ninkasi holds
Her holy sweet wort
In delicate goddess hands
Brewing it with honey
And nectar of fruit
From the Tree of Life
All blended

Ninkasi then
It is suggested
Poured her most holy sweet-wort
Into a large vessel
But this is a guess
As the next few lines
Are damaged

Delicate hands
Carrying aloft
Places the fermenting vat
Which rings low and pleasant
Appropriately
Atop a large vat
Collecting

Ninkasi she
Pours the filtered beer
Out of the collector vat
It is like the Tigris
And the Euphrates
Raging together
At one time

I wasn’t the only kid there — the stands were full of kids.  Kids and their dads.  And I was sitting there right next to mine, waiting impatiently.  We really didn’t care much about the race.  We didn’t care about the monster trucks.  We came for a motorcycle.

One motorcycle.  One rider. 

And I forget how many school buses.

Finally the time came.  The announcer spent five minutes building it up.  A dark haired rider in wild red-white-and-blue revved his motorcycle to an insane pitch, sent it flying across the grounds, hurtling up an impossibly high ramp…

…and flew…  …flew…  ……FLEW…….

…above the top of all those big yellow school buses!  He landed perfectly on the other side, choreographed with fireworks and the hysterical screams of adulation.  I remember we left right after that, my ears ringing and my throat sore.

Evil Knievel was one crazy rebel, and in so many ways, a very pure American.

Amazing he lasted to 69 years old, after all the abuse that body took.  Simply amazing. 

RIP Evil.  Jump those wide, weird canyons on your winged mount on the Other Side.

“How much money do you got?”

I counted change in my pocket, including a dollar bill. DT counted his. Gary added some to the pile.

Not much, but enough. Clearly, though, we needed to go for quantity above quality. Piling into my old 1960 “unsafe at any speed” Corvair, we headed down to the local cheap-o-rino grocery store and invaded their beer aisle. The question of the night was, which beer would give us the most cans per person for the money available?

The answer: Schaeffer’s beer.

We could buy an entire case for the price of a six pack of what I usually drank. It didn’t taste that great but at least it wasn’t horrible like Bud nor practically water, like Coors. After three of them, they started to taste just fine.

Another thing we liked about it was that each month they featured different packaging art, all based on natural themes. Aimed, no doubt, at hunters, because all the animals featured were ones people would be most likely to point guns at (while drinking their beer).

That first night, it was a squadron of mallards coming in for a landing, and so from that point on it became “Attack Duck Beer.”

The next month, it was “Staring Elk” beer.

Month after that, we were buying “Dying Trout” beer.

These were the bum years. We were attending a local junior college and holding down the occasional low paying short-term job. My dad had a storage property at the time, managing it for a business partner, and he gave me one of the storage sheds to use. We fixed it up with a round table made form a large cable spool and two benches on each side, and strung hammocks that with a flick of a hoop off a spike would drop down from the ceiling.

We routinely stayed there all night long drinking beer, bullshitting, building plastic model space ships, and writing things that would never be published. Occasionally we’d plug in an electric guitar or two and jam until someone in the neighborhood behind us called the cops.

We called the place, “The Creative Juice Factory.” It was fuelled almost exclusively by Staring Elk, Dying Trout, or Attack Duck beer.

It was a lost couple of years, but they were damn fun, and proved to me you don’t have to be rich to enjoy life.

A guy walks into a bar, sits down, and asks, “Bartender, got any specials today?”

Bartender answers, “Yes, as a matter of fact we have a new drink, invented by a gynecologist patron of ours. It’s a mix of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer and Smirnoff Vodka.”

The guy asks, “Good grief, what do you call that?”

The bartender replied, “It’s a Pabst Smir.”

- From our big dusty archive of funny email
(Authors Unknown)