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These beer lovers crave empty oldies
By DAN DeWITT SPRING HILL -- Anyone who thinks life was simpler in the old days should remember what it used to take to open a can of beer. Joe Older of Maitland pointed to an educational-looking panel, under the heading "Instructions for opening," on the side of a 50-year-old Budweiser can. The three steps, all accompanied by diagrams, were as follows: "Place hand on can as shown," "hook opener under rim," "lift opener firmly and quickly." "You did have to do it firmly, too," said Older. "These cans were steel. Feel how heavy." Older was one of about 30 members of the Gator Trader club that gathered Saturday at the Sunset Lounge on Spring Hill Drive. The club is a statewide affiliate of the National Beer Can Collectors of America. Members had a meeting, a raffle and then spent the morning and early afternoon trading cans and stories about their cans. For some collectors, including Dave McGillivray -- the lounge's owner and the event's organizer -- that is what the hobby is about. His cans tend to be mementos of good times he had drinking beer. "It's like a rock 'n' roll song," said McGillivray, 54. "The song reminds you of the first dance you had with a girl, and the can reminds you of the beer you had afterward." Like many others who attended the meet, he began collecting empty cans in the 1970s, unaware that other people around the country were starting to do the same thing at about the same time. The national organization was founded in 1970; most members did not find out about it until many years later. "I started going to the stores and buying all the kinds of beer I'd never had before," McGillivray said. The first can he collected, he said, was from a Grand Union supermarket, which, like may stores at the time, sold a house brand of beer. "They don't even have Grand Unions any more," he said. Some collectors, such as Marty Hill, 63, of Bradenton, do not drink at all. He is passing the hobby on to his 5-year-old grandson, Nathan Hill. "I like the new, rare, good ones," Nathan Hill said. Like Nathan, the 41-year-old Older is too young to have drunk beer from most of the cans he collects, which are mostly 12-ounce "flattops." That term refers to the smooth tops that were standard before pop-top cans became common in the 1960s. For Older, his cans -- many from old regional breweries -- are more likely to represent a time and era than a night out. The labels on the cans lined up on his wooden racks included Old Dutch Brand from Findlay, Ohio; Hudepohl from Cincinnati; and Regal from Miami, one of several Florida breweries that have since disappeared. Older grew up in Parkersburg, W.Va., which is just down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. People there usually drank local beers such as Duquesne and Iron City, he said. Those brews were crowded out by national brands as refrigeration and transportation became cheaper and more efficient. Another factor was the new brands' more sophisticated national advertising campaigns. One of Older's favorite regionals was West Virginia beer, made by the Fesenmeier Brewing Co. of Huntington, W.Va., which folded in the early 1960s. About the time Miller was advertising itself as the "Champagne of Beers," West Virginia's tag line was "That'll win ya!" -- Dan DeWitt can be reached at 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com.
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