The Comfort of Rolling Rock

I just heard the news today that Anheuser-Busch purchased the Rolling Rock beer brand. This happened in May, and the last bottles were shipped from the original plant at the end of July. Oddly enough, I had already decided to visit my folks today at the house where I grew up in Pimlico and where I first tasted Rolling Rock.

Back then, in the late 60s, it was just me, my mother, grandmother and her second husband James Clark. He was the grandfather who let me taste Rolling Rock and Colt 45, which he usually drank. He shouldn't have been drinking that much himself, as he had diabetes, and often ate his chicken boiled. But he liked to buy me things that I liked or thought I did. TV commercials had inspired me to ask for TAB, and it was radio commericlas that inspired me to ask for Rolling Rock. There was the sound of rolling spring water, proof that it was natural and pure enough for a 7-year-old to taste. Plus it came in those 7 oz. little bottles that were just made for a child's hand... And it was made by people in Pennsylvania. You know? The pure and innocent Pennsylvania Dutch, Amish, very religious people in buggies.

In the end, I don't remember how much beer I actually sipped from those few bottles of Rolling Rock before I decided that it really didn't taste that much like spring water, even if it was made from it. Then again, I had sipped Colt 45 and a bull never came to tip over my table. (Remember that WB Doner ad?) I think back then I may have tasted National Boh too, while listening to Orioles baseball while sitting on the front porch.

Anyway, when Grandpa James decided to move away, my source of alcohol was gone, and I didn't have another beer for about 10 or more years. I think it was still a while after that before I had a Rolling Rock again. My tastes now run the gamit from Ireland (Guinness) to Mexico (Corona) and every little microbrew in between. However, it was always a comfort to get a green bottle of Rolling Rock in my hand, remembering the sound of the water flowing, and thinking of the nice, pure Pennsylvania people who made it and somehow got it into my hands.

Sadly, Anheuser-Busch has closed the original, once-family-owned brewery in Latrobe, PA, in favor of switching operations to, of all places, New Jersey... No images of babbling brooks there!

It's also sad that today, stopping in Alonso's, after coming back from visiting my folks, that I opted for a draft... a Bass draft. But it was still a comfort that once I did look into their glass cases, there was a row of Rolling Rock bottles on a shelf below the Natty Boh.

It's all about comfort, anyway you can get it, isn't it?