Yuengling Beer

This story is a little lengthy, but I hope you guys like it.

This past week I was in Canada on vacation with my family. We've gone to the same "resort" (I put resort in quotations because it's really just a small group of cabins and three docks, when I say resort I think of the very fancy ones like down in Mexico) for the past 9ish years. Each year there's the same older gentleman named Ken, he and his wife, Carolyn I believe her name was, stay at the same resort we do however they have been going for about 20 years and they stay for 6 weeks every summer. We have never really co-mingled with them at all. Then on our second to last day at the cabin, we are pulling into the dock and grabbing all of our stuff out of our boat when Ken pulls up to the dock on his boat. Now Ken and Carolyn are 79 and 78 years old respectively and the boat sits considerably lower than the dock, so it's a large step up to get on the dock. Carolyn made it out of the boat however while she was trying to hang on to the boat with her cane she fell right into the water. At 78 that spells trouble and we were hours away from the nearest hospital. Much to my surprise she pops up, says she's fine and starts walking to shore (the water is about 3 feet deep). Then she hits a large mud patch and begins to lose her footing and starts falling in the water. At that point me and my sister hop in the water and lend her a hand getting to shore. The mud was very aggressive by the way, I had trouble staying on my feet and I'm only 22. Anyway she got to shore, said thank you, brushed herself off and went to her cabin to go shower.

Shortly after the ordeal, Ken was cleaning the fish he caught that day in the cleaning house, which is where my dad and I were cleaning our fish. He thanked us for helping his wife out and then we proceeded to make small talk. Keep in mind that in the 9 or so years we have been coming to this camp we've never spoken with Ken or his wife, not that we didn't want to or we avoided them or anything like that. We were just always wrapped up with what we were doing and we just never made an effort. Anyway after the small talk he mentioned to my dad that he got his hands on some Yuengling Beer. I had never heard of the brew, but my dad had and he got excited immediately because apparently he remembered it being very good.

Yuengling is the oldest brewing company in America it was founded in 1829 by David G. Yuengling, an immigrant from Germany, who brought over his brewing skills that he learned from his father who ran a brewery in Germany. He set up shop in Pottsville Pennsylvania and it still stands today. The history behind the company is an interesting one and I encourage you to take a look at it on their website at https://www.yuengling.com/our-brewery/. Back to the story.

So Ken could clearly tell that my dad was a fan of the beer and offered to have us over for a few. I obviously would have helped his wife out beer or no beer, and I believe most decent human beings would do the same, but it was certainly a nice reward and as a Wisconsinite it's a sin to turn down a free beer. So my whole family made the trek over to Ken's cabin once the fish cleaning was finished. We got there and he handed us a bottle of Yuengling light. Guys I know it sounds like I'm advertising for Yuengling right now, but I'm telling you... that beer was fucking delicious.

We started swapping fishing stories as fisherman do, and talking about the camp as well as our shared love for the outdoors. Then we asked Ken the question that has been eating my whole family up inside for 9 years. We asked him what he did for a living before he retired. You see, Ken has a very deep distinct radio voice. This guy's vocal chords were hand crafted for radio or news casting, so we always had a vision of Ken being the DJ at a radio station. Well we were wrong. Ken is an Air Force veteran, 20+ years in the service. I believe he said he retired as an E-7 Master Sergeant but I could be wrong, and to be honest with you guys I'm not real familiar with all the rankings in the military but just in case anyone was wondering I thought I'd throw that in there.

Ken worked in a surveillance aircraft called AWACS (Airborne early warning and control) which he described as a large jet full of computers with the latest and greatest technology, and he flew over Russia many times. He was in at the height of the Cold War and mentioned how his job was to look for anything out of the ordinary and anything that might be a threat. He and his wife had been all over the world from France and western Europe to the Middle East to Italy and a ton of places in between. His wife had stories as well about living in Saudi Arabia for a little over a year and how life was so much different for those people and how Ken and her had to adapt. They were a small town couple from Arkansas and found themselves smack dab in the middle of world events. Ken spoke fondly on his time in the service. I could tell he loved the top secret work he did. He said they weren't allowed to tell anyone about what they were doing, not even their wives. So the only real friends he had were his fellow service members who he could speak freely with, the rest of the people he spoke with he had to filter what he said to make sure he didn't say anything he wasn't supposed to say.

His wife Carolyn also loved the time he spent in the military. I had told her that I had traveled through Europe a little as well. She shared with me all of her feelings on the magnificent buildings, cathedrals, and artwork throughout Europe and how historic and wild it all was. Tons of people live their whole lives without seeing a quarter of the world that they saw. By the end of the conversation I was disappointed we hadn't talked to them earlier, maybe we could've got some more stories out of them.

After talking for about an hour the beer was running dry and we figured we better head back to our cabin and maybe head back out fishing, Ken and Carolyn thanked us for the help at the dock earlier and we thanked them for the beer. As we walked away I thought to myself, how fitting a beer Yuengling was for Ken and Carolyn. This beer came from the oldest brewery in America and this couple had been a witness to one of the more interesting times in American history. I enjoyed both the beer and the company.

It took us nine years to even say a word to this couple, but just one drink to hear their whole life story. So my friends, if somebody offers you a drink, don't be afraid to say yes.