Friends, A Lake Setting, and Old School Schlitz

We often enjoy the camaraderie experienced when we gather with a dinner club with which Suzie has been associated for about three decades. As is commonly the case with such groups, the location of dinner club events is rotated among the homes of the participating couples. We additionally get together for a shared meal at a restaurant on occasion.

One of the couples shares with siblings in the family a quintessential lake house near Laurie, Missouri, at the Lake of the Ozarks, and the rest of us are blessed by invitation to relax there over a weekend and bask in collective friendship a time or two each year. We enjoyed just such a gathering two weekends ago.

We boated all over the lake. Suzie proved her continuing youthfulness by waterskiing as adeptly as a teenager. Unfortunately for me, she was at the tail end of her endurance when she failed to catch my favorite bucket hat with her knees when it blew off of my head and flew between her legs. Games such as Apples to Apples and Catch Phrase were played to stave off the diminishment of our old minds. Way too much good food was consumed, and as a Louisiana native, I fully endorse such behavior.

It seems that there is always some bonus moment associated with these trips to the lake. On one occasion, Suzie and I stopped at an antique shop in the little town of Cole Camp on the way home. We found for a bargain price a silver plate tomato spoon that has added to our joy of eating sliced homegrowns each season. This time one of the dinner club guys brought a half-case of Schlitz beer. I had been seeing news items and ads that mentioned that Schlitz was being reintroduced with its original formula that put it in the top two American beers in the Sixties and Seventies.

When I was in college, I had to develop a taste for beer. Had might seem to be a strong word, but I was in school in Louisiana, so it truly was a necessity. As I did so, I finally settled on Schlitz as my brew of choice. Formula changes, a strike, and a buyout by Stroh’s of Detroit queered the beer. Now under ownership of Pabst and using the old original formula, Schlitz is back! When I took my first swallow two weekends ago, I knew my favorite beer had returned in all its original splendor. It was like a swallow of the longneck I ordered on the first day they sold beer at the LSU Union back in 1969.

Finally, here's another bonus moment by means of a picture of a billboard advertising a drinking establishment near the Lake of the Ozarks. I'll bet an Old School Schlitz could be enjoyed there.