A long time ago in a land far
away (okay, in 1992 when I was in college, at Western Illinois University)
I discovered good beer at a place on the square in Macomb called The Cafe.
My friend Ryan introduced me to the finer beers at The Cafe such as Watney's
Red Barrel; an English, reddish ale and Wild Boar, a spicy pilsner from
Dubuque, Iowa. (Both beers, I believe, are dead and gone.) They live on
in my memory, however, as part of my first stops in a long trip -- or perhaps
a hunt -- for the many different styles and brands of beer. I can remember
I would save the money I made working at the student newspaper ($74.01 a week) where I
was a writer, and later an editor, so I could have a good Saturday night
at the Cafe. Good music (blues, rock and jazz) usually accompanied the
good beer list that seemed to grow over the years.
I became a card carrying member
of the The Cafe's Imported & Specialty Beer Club. The club, in theory,
worked like this: you'd drink all the beers on the card and get a beer
mug and T-shirt. The first Belgian beer I ever had, Chimay -- was at the
Cafe. The first stout I ever had -- bottled Guiness -- was at the Cafe.
A plethora of very good pilsners -- Baderbrau, Legacy Lager, Moretti, Pilsner
Urquell and Samuel Adams -- could be had at the Cafe.
All the bottles were displayed
along a brick wall behind the bar on small shelves. (I wish I had a picture.)
You could sit at the bar and look up and peruse what you wanted to try.
We wanted to try them all and I think we eventually did, but the list kept
changing, and we never seemed to be able to check off all the beers on
our club membership cards. We never recieved any prizes, but we didn't
seem to mind. All those nights listening to blues acts like 'Maestro',
an old blues guitarist from St. Louis, and quaffing bottles of lagers and
ales amidst lots of good conversation -- that was our reward!
This past year, I returned to
the Cafe, only to find that the beer list had dwindled. The music was still
good, though, and the atmosphere pretty much the same. I had a Guiness
and I think Carol had a bottle of Bass. Not bad beers, but two out of merely a
dozen compared to the 30 to 40 that made up the Imported & Specialty
Beer Club. The club was gone, and so were almost all of the beers we used
to enjoy, but as the band played songs from Pearl Jam and U2 we at least
had the comfort of the same music we had listened to 10 years earlier.
April 21, 2002
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