Introduction
It was difficult for me to decide on a title for this story. This story first developed 45 years ago and it has multiple storylines which caused me to consider multiple titles. I had a couple of click-baity titles ready to use but decided against them. For the record, here they are:
- Why I Love Beer!
- 99 Cans of Beer on the Wall, 99 Cans of Beer..”
I bet you can hear that song about bottles of beer on the wall right now (that, my friends, is a subliminal message from me to you). I bet some of you might be considering popping open a cold one as you enjoy the journey this story is about to take you on.
If you know me, however, you already know that I would have been fooling you with either of those titles. I think it’s been at least 15 years since I have even tasted beer!
What I love about beer, however, are the beer cans and the stories that they can tell!
Introduction
It was in the early to mid-1970’s when the beer can collecting craze hit the United States. A little more specifically, both me and my nephew Brian independently began assembling beer can collections as pre-teens.
Back then you could go into different types of shops and find empty beer cans for sale. For a kid like me with little to no money, I had to scrounge around to find new cans to add to my collection.
It was also a great day when I happened to find some rusty old beer can lying in a field somewhere, or I just happened to find a can in someone’s garbage as I walked down an alley in my neighborhood. I was a scavenger (now reddit calls people like me “dumpster divers“), and I didn’t care about a little rust or a little stale beer smell here or there. I would clean the can inside and out and add it to my collection. These were the days long before the primary use of aluminum for cans.
One day, Brian and I decided to merge our collections to form a more complete and larger collection. The good news for us at that time was that there were several beer drinkers in our extended family.
We were able to extend our collection by asking our relatives to tap into a few different types of beers when the situations arose. Did you notice the clever use of the word “tap” in that sentence (that is another subliminal message)?
My First Entrepreneurial Endeavor
In what might have been my very first true entrepreneurial endeavor (other than running a kool-aid stand, or having a newpaper route, or selling the Grit newspaper!), Brian and I created an idea to form a company. We decided to call it (quite creatively) Beer Cans, Inc.
To form this company, we had to collect beer cans, learn about the industry, and then raise money to obtain more cans by making our initial public stock offering (IPO). Looking back on this time, I have no idea how we even knew about selling stocks! I think we created the company in one night.
If you don’t believe me, look at Figure 1. This is the very first public stock that was sold to my Mom in or about 1975. Unfortunately since I was only 12 years old, I forgot to date the stock purchase agreement!
My Mom paid us the handsome sum of $1.00 US for this share of stock. For the record, KB doesn’t stand for Ken Black. It stands for Ken & Brian, since Brian and I co-founded the company. Since I was the elder statesman at about 12 years-old (Brian was 9), I signed the IPO.
This is the original card that I wrote and signed as a 12-year old. It survived many years in my Mom’s wallet. She would occassionally pull it out and ask how much money the stock was worth? That went on for many years. That is why that folded card is dirty and the edges are worn. That paper is now a piece of my family’s history.
How Did This Stock Survive 45 Years?
How, when and where this share of stock was returned to the collection is somewhat of a mystery to both me and Brian. To get Brian’s recollection, you’ll have to read to the end of the story and look at Figure 15. However, my recollection occurred on the day after writing the previous sentence. I had a faint memory reappear after many years.
In the video shown below, I offer a plausible explanation of how that stock offering got returned to the collection, although I’m not sure of when it happened or even if it did happen! Videos like this are never planned, they just spontaneously emerge.
I believe that we sold a grand total of three shares (possibly four) of stock before we retired the collection after years of gathering cans. The shareholders included Brian, my Mom, me and possibly a fourth person (possibly my Godfather, Bob Kerr). However, that part of the story has also been lost in time, although I do remember that we had started a ledger of stock-holders. This is additional proof that I was destined to work in the field of business analytics (as if we needed any more proof).
The Lost Collection
The last time I saw our collection was probably 40 years ago. The last time I remember seeing it, the cans were being packed into cardboard boxes and being placed under a staircase in a closet at my Sister’s house.
Imagine my surprise when the kismet popped into my life about two weeks ago. I was cleaning my father-in-law’s cellar when I noticed some beer cans sitting in a huge pile of spider webs. These cans were lonely, they were tired of being neglected, and they were calling out my name. In fact, two or three of them still contained the beer! Figure 2 shows the cans that I am talking about.
Since my father-in-law passed away last month, I wasn’t able to ask him about where he got these cans and why he decided to keep them. I can only surmise that he had also felt the desire to collect beer cans back in the late 1970’s, too. I just knew that he would have wanted me to have them if only he knew about my beer can collection!
My Memory Has Been Awoken
As I mentioned previously, kismet came calling in the following form. When I retrieved the five cans from cellar, I sent a picture to Brian to show him. I asked him about our beer can collection. We hadn’t talked about our collection for at least two or three decades!
As fate would have it, Brian had just begun the process of resurrecting our beer can display! This is one of the stories that the universe creates that lets you know that there is a higher-power at work, orchestrating seemingly random events that make perfect sense when you think about them.
Brian was already in the process of building some shelving to display our cans in his “man-cave” or “man-garage” or whatever it might be called. I couldn’t believe my good luck! I can’t wait to visit his house this fall and watch a Bears game while reminiscing about our beer can collection.
Brian’s work was going to allow me to see what we had collected as kids decades ago. He was going to take me on a multi-decade journey that would be the impetus for this story. For me it was like opening a virtual time capsule. His actions were going to benefit me by allowing me to see what we had collected as kids.
Opening the Time Capsule
A couple of days ago, Brian was kind enough to send me some pictures of the cans that he chose to display. Figure 3 is a gallery showing about 1/3 of our collection.
Brian still has a couple containers with more cans that hopefully will be displayed in the future (Figure 4).
What Can You Learn From Beer Cans?
Example 1 – Edelweiss
To start, consider the can shown in Figure 5. This is a can of Edelweiss. As the can indicates, this has been a fine beer for over 100 years.
Being born a non-beer-drinking Chicago city boy, I had no idea what an Edelweiss represents. I had to do a Google search to find out. Figure 6 is the definition of Edelweiss and the following video is a song about that flower from the Sound of Music.
Now I know that video is seriously dorky, but I couldn’t help myself. It had to be included in this article. The googly-eyed girls reminded me of how we felt when we found new beer cans!
Example 2 – The Seduction of Tennent’s Beer
On the front side, Tennent’s Lager seems a bit innocuous. Figure 7 shows the front of two cans, with their big red T Trademark shown.
The University of Tennessee’s big Orange T is shown in Figure 8. You will notice that the trademarks only vary by either having straight lines or curvilinear lines. A reasonable person would conclude that one trademark was stolen from the other.
The story that you probably don’t know is that the Tennent lager company and the University of Tennessee got into a big lawsuit over this apparent trade infringement of the big Red T and the big Orange T. The lawsuit was settled out of court when The University of Tennessee agreed to only serve Tennent’s lager at their football games.
The most important part of the agreement, however, was that the servers had to mimic the Tennent’s model Penny. The servers had to start the game looking like Penny in the evening and they had to finish the game looking like Penny at the end of the day! Figure 9 shows you what I mean!
I know what you are thinking. Mr. 3danim8 has never told a lie in the history of this blog! Yep, you are right. I had never told a lie. Until now, that is.
That story is complete B.S.! I just had to include it, however, because this is a story about beer and we all know that stories tend to get stretched out of proportion while consuming this beverage. Additionally, the Penny cans were treasures for pre-teen boys to collect.
Example 3 – The Walgreen’s Beer Brand
If you live in the United States, chances are good that you have shopped at the Walgreens drug store. I bet you didn’t know that Walgreens also brewed their own beer!
I know what you are thinking. You are probably saying: “He is full of B.S., this is another made-up story!”. Walgreens doesn’t brew beer. They make things related to heath care!
Figure 10 is a can of Old Heildel Brau. This was the beer sold for Walgreens!
If you were to look at the fine print on the can as shown in Figure 11, you would learn a surprising fact. Old Heidel Brau was brewed for Walgreens in Deerfield, IL at a brewry in Fort Wayne, IN! This story is true.
Final Thoughts and How the Story Began
If you made it to this point in this article, thanks for coming along on my journey. If this blog offers anything to its readers, it is that I sometimes pull stories from my life that are decades old.
Sometimes these stories are silly and sometimes they are serious. You can’t plan stories like this one. Figure 12-15 contains the text messages written over 10 days that show how this story began.
All of these stories remind me of the beauty of life and how fast life is passing us by. Enjoy your day and find some time to tell your kids about your first business endeavor! Thanks for reading.
Great article!!! I believe there may be a few more shares of stock (in paper form) out there, although mine isn’t showing up in my Edward Jones account….
Also – how ironic is it that I would go on to work at Walgreens for 30 years, meeting my wife there and she has 30+ years. And all of our family that put in time at Walgreens… crazy huh??
Great article! I do remember the beer can collection. I did not know it still existed. It looks like Brian took good care of it. Stories like this bring back many happy memories.
Loved this article. Thank you Ken.