{"id":1044,"date":"2026-07-18T08:07:01","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T08:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2026-07-18T08:07:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T08:07:01","slug":"me-and-a-beer-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1044","title":{"rendered":"Me and a Beer Can"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he title of this article is a nod to country singer Chris Janson and his clever hit, \u201c<\/span>Me & A Beer<\/span>.\u201d\u00a0 The song begins:<\/span><\/p>

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Prettiest girl I\u2019d ever seen<\/span>\n<\/span>Look at her, man, look at me<\/span>\n<\/span>I thought \u201cI can\u2019t just walk up and ask her to dance\u201d<\/span>\n<\/span>But me and a beer can.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>

Inspired words, indeed. Many a man can relate \u2014 with a beer can.<\/span><\/p>

In Janson\u2019s lyrics, the \u201ccan\u201d is a verb, not the noun I\u2019m going for in this article. I\u2019m 59 years old and have been married to the lovely Susan for 33 years, plus I\u2019m a good Catholic boy (or at least try to be). I\u2019m not hitting the clubs, summoning up beer courage to ask pretty girls to dance. That would be fun, sure, but those days are long gone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Anyway, I\u2019m invoking beer cans. The noun \u2014 a beer can.<\/span><\/p>

I love beer cans \u2014 more than I like beer, actually. Like many boys of the 1980s, I collected them. I had less interest in consuming their contents (that would come in college) than collecting them for fun and their value. Back then, collecting beer cans was all the rage. How that happened, I\u2019m not exactly sure. No doubt, beer producers had a lot to do with it. They created handsome-looking products that just screamed: \u201ccollectible.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

One example was the beautiful <\/span>Schmidt Beer series of cans<\/span> adorned with colorful wildlife images. You bought that beer for the artwork \u2014 to keep and display. They were too nice to toss in the trash.<\/span><\/p>

Less attractive were the famous <\/span>Miss Olde Frothingslosh cans<\/span>, which featured a very large but happy, beaming woman in a bathing suit. That image was quite the opposite of, say, the <\/span>St. Pauli Girl cans<\/span>. Still, Olde Frothingslosh was fun. Here, too, you weren\u2019t buying for the beer. These were collectibles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In my neck of the woods, Iron City Brewing produced <\/span>splendid cans sporting team photos<\/span> of the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers of the era. Those items were enormously popular in these parts. And I must say that, like the <\/span>iconic Terrible Towel<\/span> created by legendary Steelers announcer Myron Cope, these cans seem to possess mysterious powers. On certain key occasions over the decades, when the Steelers are in a major game, I pull out the cans as heavy artillery, positioning them in front of the TV set, resting on a Terrible Towel. Akin to sacred relics, they seem to exude some sort of mystical property \u2014 tapping into unseen forces \u2014 that prod the team to victory. Proof?<\/span><\/p>

\n
\"Vintage<\/figure>\n

Photo Credit: Paul Kengor<\/p><\/div>

Well, the Steelers have the most Super Bowl victories of all time (tied), plus dozens of playoff wins and division titles, and the record (still ongoing) for most consecutive non-losing seasons (22) \u2014 actually a record among the four major sports. Surely my display, my <\/span>reliquary<\/span> marshaling the powers of the Iron City cans, accounts for this success.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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\n
\"(Paul<\/figure>\n

Photo Credit: Paul Kengor<\/p><\/div>

But I digress! Back to beer cans.<\/span><\/p>

In my day, there was nothing more exciting to a roving band of scavenging boys than rummaging around a junkyard searching for rare cans and other buried treasures. We spent hours at the task as if digging for gold. We would bring home dirty cans, shock our mothers with the smell (of the cans and ourselves), and clean them up. It\u2019s almost indescribable the joy of a 12-year-old boy finding a rare <\/span>cone top can<\/span> in an old junkyard.<\/span><\/p>

Speaking of cone tops, our biggest thrill \u2014 me and my brother and two cousins \u2014 came at our Aunt Emma\u2019s house in Emporium, Pennsylvania. My aunt\u2019s husband, Uncle Rich, had used a sledgehammer to breach a basement wall to create a fruit cellar under the front porch. What they found in the rubble was utterly unexpected: piles of perfect-condition <\/span>Iroquois Indian Head<\/span> and <\/span>Stegmaier\u2019s Gold Medal<\/span> cone tops. Evidently, the crew that built the house decades earlier would finish the day with a few brewskis, tossing the empties into a pit they never thought would see the light of day \u2014 until Uncle Rich busted open the wall. Each can was worth $40 minimum in the \u201880s \u2014 thousands of dollars in beer cans preserved in near-mint condition under that porch. I keep two of those cans in my bookcase. My brother and cousins likewise retain a few as mementos.<\/span><\/p>

Back in <\/span>my hometown of Butler<\/span>, we boys displayed the cans on shelves in garages, beams in basements, in stacks in family rooms, or wherever. My friend \u201cDuck\u201d turned a small barn into a house of beer cans. It was the coolest thing. My friend \u201cFlem\u201d happened upon a treasure trove: an old lady on his paper route who guzzled so much beer that her outdoor garbage was always full of gems for our picking. Uncles who drank beer would save us choice cans. My buddies had hundreds. We would trade and sell them.<\/span><\/p>

Today, I retain only a few dozen favorites. That includes old <\/span>Billy Beer<\/span> cans never tapped and with liquid (in some form) still inside. Some readers will remember that this was an amusing novelty beer invoking President Jimmy Carter\u2019s drunk of a brother \u2014 somehow even more of a geek than \u201cJimma\u201d himself, though Billy no doubt would have made a better president. Hell, Miss Olde Frothingslosh would have made a better president. Billy was part of what our venerable founder, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., characterized as the \u201ccoterie of yokels\u201d and \u201cPeanut Brigade\u201d who occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the late \u201870s.<\/span><\/p>

\n
\"Vintage<\/figure>\n

Photo Credit: Paul Kengor<\/p><\/div>

Regrettably, boys don\u2019t seem to be collecting beer cans today. The junkyards are probably condemned as environmental hazards by state bureaus of natural resources or prohibited by federal menaces from the Department of the Interior as protected habitats for mangy rats or rattlesnakes. CYS would descend on the scene to arrest the boys\u2019 parents for permitting youngsters to search for \u201cbeer.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

But I can attest to the interest, if not excitement, that never goes away in the mind of a boy. A few weeks ago, me and two of my sons were wading in a creek in an isolated spot in the woods behind our house. My 12-year-old found a bottle buried in a sandy-muddy spot. He reacted as if he had just discovered Aladdin\u2019s lamp. At first glance, one would dismiss it as just \u201csome bottle.\u201d But little Ben had high hopes. He brought it home and commenced cleaning it, certain it would fetch him a small fortune. A lady at a local antique shop told him to use denture-cleaning tablets to clean it up. The tablets worked like a charm. We learned that Ben had found a <\/span>1940s Pepsi Cola bottle<\/span>, resting there in the creek for some eight decades. It isn\u2019t worth a pile of cash, but it is worth something like $15. That\u2019s a big score for a boy.<\/span><\/p>

Now, Ben and his brother are fired up to find forgotten junkyards in the woods to search for bottles and cans. Who knows? Maybe we\u2019ll find some cone tops. And even if they\u2019re rusty, who cares? We\u2019ll find some treasures together if we can.<\/span><\/p>

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Me and them and a beer can.<\/span><\/p>

READ MORE from Paul Kengor:<\/strong><\/p>

MLB\u2019s Pitching Craziness Continues<\/strong><\/p>

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