Long ago beer story

When I was just a little kid right after WW2 my dad got laid off by the B&O railroad because servicemen were returning to their jobs and the amount of military freight was also down.  (at least that was the story).  Dad got a job as a 3rd shift boiler room attendant at the Old Crown brewery in Ft. Wayne.  The brewery had a policy of giving each worker a case of beer every two weeks.  (no lie).  Dad brought his beer home , put it in a burlap bag, tied a rope around the top of the bag and sunk it in the well pit in the barnyard. (no lie, again).  He always had beer on hand when anyone would drop by.  He seemed to have a lot of friends.  I only learned about the free beer policy a few years ago when I was talking to a friend whose dad also worked at the brewery.  When I was a kid i never knew where all that beer came from.

My brother and I went to work with dad several times when he was on 3rd shift.  He would send us up to the employees tap room to get a quart of beer from the employees tap. (no lie again)  We would then boil a pound of weenies in the beer on a small hotplate.

On the way up to the taproom we had to pass by these huge vats of beer aging in cypress tanks.  Since they were open to the air they always had a lot of foam on the top.  Dad used to claim that the dark brown "bock" beer that was brewed in the spring was a result of scraping the scum off the sides of the vats in a yearly cleaning.  That sounds plausible.  He also claimed that one year they found a "N-word" floating in the bottom of one of the vats.  I always found that a little hard to believe.  I think you will realize that I had an interesting childhood.