Don't Pee in my Beer !

The other day fellow blogger, Peter, of the Peter and Bea duo, posted a blog about reminiscing.  Actually, he called it going back to childhood. I loved reading the story because it was a fun blog.   It’s amazing all we need is one little trickle of someone else’s memory to get our own mind working.  The story he reminded me of isn’t really mine.  It’s my dad’s story and he told it over and over again. 

The only picture my dad had of him with his mother.  This was taken shortly before she died.

My dad and his barely older brother lost his mother, Alice,  before he turned two years old.   My grandmother was not happy when she discovered she was pregnant, again.   Her own mother had just died when she made that discovery and she was pretty depressed.  What did she do?  Well, she tried to abort the unborn baby by using a rusty coat hanger.  Instead of aborting she developed blood poisoning and died not long afterwards.  Alice’s 17 year old sister stepped in and took care of the two little boys for a few years until she married.    My father’s childhood was a difficult one without his mother.

After a couple years with his aunt, the two little boys went to live on a ranch with their grandparents in Leakey, Texas.  Now how many of you have ever been to Leakey, Texas?  I bet not very many.  Anyway, the ranch was in the middle of nowhere.  He told many stories about rattlesnakes, riding horses to school and just not being familiar with modern conveniences.  His bathroom consisted mainly of the outdoors or outhouses even though there were some inside chamber pots too.  The river was used for bathing.  I’m sure you get the picture here --- no inside sink, no inside toilet, no inside bathtub and absolutely no inside running water.

My Grandpa on his first trip out of Texas 

Eventually, his father remarried.  That wasn’t necessarily a good thing for him.  His father’s new wife had children of her own and didn’t really want to bother raising her new husband’s two boys.  So, when small they pretty much lived with their grandparents in Leakey and attended the grade school there.  When they were a little older they moved into Kerrville and attended the school in town.

Dad and his brother did visit their father occasionally but they were still backward little country boys.  Modern conveniences such as bathroom facilities were foreign to my Dad.  He had never been in a “modern” bathroom before.  That is, he had never been in one until his first visit to his father’s new house in Kerrville.  Grandpa was proud of all the new facilities in the house.  When my dad needed to “relieve” himself, he didn't know where to go. Grandpa proudly pointed towards the inside bathroom.  Dad was confused.  He had no idea what the fixtures in that room were for.  Remember,  he was a country boy.  In the corner he discovered a big barrel and figured that was the “toilet”.  It wasn’t.  Needless to say, his father was pretty upset when he discovered his son had peed in the beer he was brewing and not in the toilet next to it.

  An old fashion beer barrel –  similar to the one my dad “soiled”.

Dad often told the story about the beer barrel and imitated his father’s voice when he found out his beer had been “tainted”.   We always got a good laugh out of it.

Thanks for the memory, Peter.


‘Tis life on the road.

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.