Where Are the Beers of Yesteryear?

I remember drinking a Pickwick Ale

     at the foot of Mt. Monadnock

And one in a bar on Church Green in Boston

     where dejected men sat and drank what was called

The "poor man's gin" during the Depression

     fifty years after the Crash.

Where are they now—

The beers of long ago?

Where is the Falstaff Beer

     that my father would drink in his living-room chair?

I would steal a sip from his near-empty bottle

     as I carried it back to the kitchen, hidden in the pantry

By the phone that I would later use to call girls

     named Carolyn, and Stella, and Peggy.

Where have they gone—

The beers of yesteryear.

I remember Hamm's Beer—

     "From the Land of Sky Blue Waters

Comes the beer refreshing."

     We would steal cans of it from Tommy Barbour's dad.

In the Hogans' basement, behind the bar,

     was a sign with water falling, sky blue water.

Where are they now—

The beers of long ago.

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman