Michelob (Circa 1976)
This month I am showing a pretty common can, a Michelob from Anheuser-Busch. This one came from their Columbus, Ohio brewery. My Dad drank it back in the day and I put it in my collection.
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Michelob
First off, let’s get to the brand. (Taken from Wikipedia with edits) Michelob is a 4.7% ABV pale lager developed by Adolphus Busch in 1896 as a "draught beer for connoisseurs". In 1961, Anheuser-Busch produced a pasteurized version of Michelob which allowed legal shipment of the beer across state lines. The brewery began shipping Michelob in bottles and draft only until 1966 when they began using cans. (There is an earlier can that is very, very rare.)
If you are old enough you probably remember the unique bottle named the teardrop bottle because it resembled a water droplet. The teardrop bottle was awarded a medal from the Institute of Design in 1962. In 1967 the bottle was redesigned for efficiency in the production line, but kept the overall ‘teardrop” theme. They dropped the unique design in favor of a traditional bottle in 2002 although it has made at least one brief appearance since.
I remember trying it in college in the late 1970s and it was good beer. Far better than Bud or Bud Light IMHO. Although I confess that Schoenling’s Little Kings Cream Ale and Genny Cream Ale were my favorites.
My Dad
My Dad in my fraternity house room, apx 1980.
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However, I picked this can, not because I liked the beer, but because it was my Dad’s favorite. He’s been gone for 20 years now and with Father’s Day approaching I’ve been thinking about him. Kent Benbow was a plant engineer for GM in Moraine, Ohio, working first for Frigidaire and then for GM trucks. A graduate of GMI in Flint, he was the third generation of his family to work in the Moraine plant. (I was the fourth, 1977-1978) Dad was a quiet man and loved hard Science Fiction. (I still have several decades’ worth of his copies of Analog). He was a very active member of the Lions and a Presbyterian elder. Most of all, my Dad was very supportive of my collecting. When I collected coins he’d save his change and we’d go through it. When I collected stamps he took me to stamp shows along with my Uncle Jim. When I collected rocks he took me out to find them. When I saved sea shells he'd wade into the surf to find the ones wayyy out on a sandbar when I was not allowed to go. And when, at age 17 in 1976, I started collecting beer cans he took me out to find them. We’d go to Woody’s Little Farm in West Carrollton and he’d pick up a few new cans for me. I can tell which ones in my collection he opened because he’d put two small nail holes in the bottom. He was never much of a drinker. I never saw him have more than one beer and rarely, if ever, hard liquor. I suspect more than one of the beers he bought for me so I’d have the can ended up down the kitchen sink. After retirement he collected Wizard of Oz stuff, especially with the Tinman. So I was not the only collector in the family by a longshot! We had our differences, as fathers and sons do. He was always so precise in everything that my awful handwriting drove him to distraction. My struggling with math classes always bewildered him. When he read my dissertation draft he said it was “too academic.” (smile) But then, my family was largely divided between teachers and engineers and I took after the educators’ side. On the other hand I remember once he took me to a can show at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. We paid our admissions and went in. When we were done we left and several of us kids starting trading cans in the parking lot. The show organizer came out and began yelling at us! Apparently he thought we were denying him admission tickets. My Dad (verbally) torn him a new one! (Without cussing I should note). We’d paid our admissions and were just trading cans and to BACK OFF! The show organizer quickly retreated. I still have the on-grade yellow Johnny Pfeiffer can I got in trade that day. I have lots of happy memories of my Dad: meeting for lunch at Woody’s, going fishing the last day of summer vacation every year while my Mom went to her teachers’ meetings, trading pins at Lions Club conventions, etc. And whenever I see an old Michelob can, I think of him then too. |
