There Was This Time You See …
When telephones were connected by wires, when the only experience most people had with computers was that IBM card that came in the utility bill, when TV only had 3 or 4 channels, and when gas ran about 25¢/gallon. And when you could get paid with silver coin.
Vietnam was winding down; Watergate was winding up.
I was a college “student”; living in a dorm, doing college student things. Which rarely included that thing called “study”.
Unless it was girls.
I was young and naive … just right for adventures.
Repeating myself – “college student”, “young and naive”. Yeah, I know.
Y’all know what an adventure is, don’t ya?
An adventure is something you’d rather not be doing at the time you’re doing it – but makes a great tale later.
Not that this is a great tale – or much of an adventure. It evens out.
Coors! The magic elixir to those of us east of the Mississippi … or the Missouri as it turned out.
It’s been said that what makes Coors distinctive is its lack of taste. That may have been so for those where Coors was sold, but it was that yellow can – from mystical Colorado – and the swish sound as that pop-top was pulled that spoke magic. And maybe a touch of “you can’t get it here“.
Way back when in the days of yore, beer cost maybe $1.00 to $1.50 for a 6-pack – instead of that or more now for a single. A case might cost $5. In Colorado.
In the east? A 6-pack sold for more than $5; $20-25 for a case – price depending on how far east of the Mississippi one was.
At that time, I had a 1966 4-door Chevy Belair. It looked like this – sort of. Not as nice but at least the same color.
I bought mine for $250. Probably have to pay more than that for this one, even adjusted for inflation.
I kind of miss that car … 3 on the tree as I recall. But that might have been a different car.
Do you have any idea how much beer will fit in a 4-door 1960s sedan? The back seat? Including the trunk? Extra space up front?
I don’t remember myself, but we ended up buying the store out.
Store? You couldn’t buy the stuff in any store nearby …
But you could in Kansas City, Kansas. Hell – that’s not even 1000 miles away.
Road Trip!
Me, my buddy, a baggie or two (for holding the pop-top tabs 🙂 ), a radar detector, and a tank of gas.
Oh, yeah. The speed limit in those days was 55mph. Sure …
(Or was it? May have been – come to think on it, probably was – before such insanity was imposed upon us.)
Night rider! … well, on the way back anyway.
I should probably mention neither of us knew Kansas City – either one of them. Barely knew where it was. Out that-a-way someplace.
No matter, we’ll find it. Gas station road maps.
To this day, I don’t know where we were … someplace not far off the highway; someplace in Kansas; someplace after dark, someplace in a neighborhood two white boys didn’t belong.
Even if we were from Detroit.
Uh-oh …
Probably should have had a clue when the employees helping us load the beer were carrying baseball bats … and perhaps other items best left hidden. Too late by then anyway.
Friendly chaps though … didn’t even rip us off … too badly.
Perhaps asking them to help us empty one of the baggies helped.
Portal to portal in less than 24 hours. Home at dawn.
There was a mystique about Coors in those days. People came up to us to buy what we had as we were unloading.
It’s barely dawn. Where did you all come from this time of day?
Did I mention I was in college then and lived in a dorm? That we were unloading at the dorm front door?
The word must have gotten out that we were on a beer run.
This was years before “Smokey and the Bandit“
They were paying $10 for a 6-pack.
Do you know how many 6-packs fit into a 1966 4-door sedan?
I paid a semester’s worth of classes, books, and other expenses from that trip.
And enough left over to eventually have a beer-can pyramid any self-respecting, dorm-living, party animal college student would be proud of.
With a little help from my friends of course.
Didn’t need no student loans. Went out and worked for my money.
Much, much later … after many decades had passed by … I ended up living in Golden. Before it got all foo-foo like it is now. Lived above the Ace Tavern for a while as a matter of fact. Nobody drank Coors there.
Took the short tour of the brewery many times – but the magic had gone. The taste probably never was there; it certainly wasn’t in the now of that time..
Coors Light? What? They just scoop the water out of Clear Creek and can it? After they take any taste out?
Distribution is now nation-wide, the beer is probably pasteurized. Did that make a difference? Times have changed, as did the tastes and mysteries of the nation.
The myths of my youth have been replaced by facts.
Last I heard, Coors isn’t even brewed in Colorado anymore.
No, despite this pretty much true tale, I am not a beer guzzler and what beer I drink/drank is of higher quality than Coors. But I have a 6-pack of good porter floating around here someplace that’s over a year old. I just sort-of stopped drinking the stuff.
And not because I “had” to.
Getting older isn’t pretty.
Better than the alternative though.
Nice story. We all have em don’t we?
I remember when Coors was a thing – coz all it was to us Florida folks was a mystery, a legend, a desire all in one. Until I got out west and unlike everyone else in the bar at the time, I was the only one drinking it. The myth was better than the reality.
FM radio was like Coors in a way. Remember FM radio? It was “stereo” man. Way better’n that AM stuff everyone listened to in Fort Myers, FL, the place of my formative years. The closest FM radio station was way over in Ft Lauderdale on the east coast and the only way you could hear it was to have a decent antenna and an FM radio. I knew an older dood that earned decent money and he had an “audio system” that was a thing to behold and he had an antenna hooked up to it. The radio station was called WSHE, or She for short. They played whole albums in a row with no commercials, of stuff nobody on the west coast of Florida ever heard of, but have seen posters of at Rainbow Records. Iron Butterfly. Doors. Steppenwolf. That stuff wasn’t played on the AM stations we got on our little portable radios, cause we didn’t have an antenna!
In 1971 I turned 16 and started driving, legally, and one of the first things I did was get a Craig AM-FM radio with a cassette player and hung it under the dashboard. Man, I was the cat’s pajama’s now! Jensen triaxle speakers mounted in the rear deck. Whoa.
Back then it was legal to drive and drink but you couldn’t be drunk. If a cop noticed your driving was out of kilter he pull ya over and give the you the test and if you didn’t pass you went to the hokey over night. The next morn you paid a $50 fine and that was it. Now a days if you get caught with an just an open container your life is almost ruined because of it. In many ways life was way better back then.
My graduation year, 1972.
Ah, the 70s. The 60s were a warm-up. Tales I could tell – most of us could tell – but not enough time has passed yet.
Notice if you will the car in the background of my pic.
It is my mothers light green 2dr 66 Chevy Bellaire that became my sisters car a couple years later. The 66 Mustang was mine, and right in front of it is my dad’s brand new 1972 El Camino SS.
My dad was an engine freek. We always had plenty of machines with engines around. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters (Cushman Eagles), boats, minibikes, racing gokarts, etc., etc. From an early age I learned how to work a wrench and spent countless hours on my back under vehicles with my dad and never paid for repair on anything with an engine until I was well into married life and vehicles in particular became too complicated and expensive to work on – about the mid 80’s.
Oh wow …. the good old days, indeed. I spent five years getting a couple of degrees at a very good university in Golden in the cross-over years from the 60s to the 70s and can vouch for your stories. If I remember correctly, the Coors six-pack as $1.09 at every store in town and every Tuesday, anyone who worked (even part time as did many students) at the brewery could buy two cases for $2.34 per case. You can bet that allotment never went to waste.
That very good university in Golden was why I was there. A bit late in life compared to others. Met my wife there.
So Hmmmmm ….. I came in ’67 and left in ’72. Do we know each other?
Doubtful, I was there in the 90s. Did you know Cathy (King) Skokan? I believe she started in ’66; stayed put, retired in 2015
I know a lot of them but I don’t think I’ve run across her.
she was in geophysics and the first female PhD
Visionary Mountains
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When was the last time you heard this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZbIWEQf1NY
A haiku…..
70’s. Boulder. Physics.
FAC* on The Hill? Overwhelmed.
Beer or graduate?
*FAC= Friday Afternoon Club,–pronounced as one word “FAC”….a weekly event beginning around 2pm in thebars of “The Hill” neighborhood immediately west of CU-Boulder. The Hill area was home to many fraternities, and not coincidentally, a good number of bars. These were the days when an 18 year old freshman could buy 3.2 beer. Given that I spent much of my 4 years there over my head with my studies, I didn’t spend nearly as much time on The Hill as others did.
I was there 73-79, including a gap year. I have less than fond memories of 3.2 beer, from which we were saved in 1974 when Liquor Mart moved in. It was a great place to go to college, especially if you were a rock-climber, but I wouldn’t have wanted to live there afterward, and didn’t.
I turned 16 in 1970 and got my driver’s license. I drove my Dad’s ’60 Pontiac Ventrua for a few months until the transmission failed. Dad and I went car shopping one evening at car lots in the capitol city. I had my eye on a ’64 Impala 2 door hardtop and I had saved up $500. I was looking at a ’64 Impala, mist green bench seat and 283 powerglide priced at $499. Nest to it was a beautiful black Impala SS with red interior, bucket seats and a 4 speed, but it was $599. I asked Dad if he would loan me the difference and he said yes, but I think you should get the Pontiac next to it. Now Dad and all his family drove Pontiacs since the 1930’s so that’s why he said that. Thanks Dad, that’s how my first car was a $800 dark blue1965 Pontiac GTO 4 speed 389 4bbl. Still have it through a series of misadventures and procrastination. Could drive it tomorrow with a new battery and some luck and not get caught with 1984 tags. I will never drive through the high school campus lawn with open headers after the football game again though. Definitely not worth it, and I’m sure glad that blond cheerleader I thought was so sweet in 1972 got away.
WoW! He STILL has it!
Impressive. The things we let get away….. A 65 GTO would be wonderful to drive around currently and would turn gobs of heads. I bought an 82 Sportster when I was 19. Still riding it. I am about to hit the fourth quarter of life this week. Squirt some gas on the pistons and it fires right up every spring.
This dood needs to be dragged. Right NOW.
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“No one is more delighted that the United States is retreating from its global leadership role than the Communist Party of China,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said. “I want to be clear: The latest attempt by the Trump administration to freeze U.S.-funded foreign aid assistance and punish the men and women who are working at the agency is a gift to our adversaries that will make us less safe.”
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/05/g-s1-46669/usaid-trump-stop-work-protest-rally
npr.org
**snicker**
National Proletariat Radio
I spent my juvenile delinquency years ages 11 thru 22 in Roswell. If not for drugs and beer I don’t think I could have survived. Coors was everywhere but Budweiser was the beer of choice. In 1979 when Joni Mitchell played Red Rocks with Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays and Jaco Pastorious in tow I had to see her. She was NEVER coming to Roswell. A week later the Grateful Dead were coming. I’d never seen them before so I hung out in Boulder that week. That’s when I went back to grab all my stuff and move to Boulder. I never went to college. Being a sign painter my canvas was Pearl Street Mall. I painted the antique red popcorn cart that was parked there many years. In those days there was a major boycott of Coors beer. The owner of Coors, I think his name was Joe, was breaking into employees cars searching for drugs and whatever else he could find. Drinking Coors was very uncool. The amazing Liquor Mart store was selling Genesee Creme Ale and I had a loving relationship with that brew. I still buy it when I’m driving back east. I didn’t realize how conservative I was back in the couple of years I lived in Boulder. I never clicked with college students and oftentimes drove up to Nederland to the Pioneer Inn to drink with the working class. I never could afford to buy a house in Boulder so it was back to New Mexico for me… but never Roswell again.
I was friends with the guy that took care of the frozen man in Nederland.
OK. Git up off of it. We need to hear about this frozen dood.
In the words of my ol’ gray haired Pap: “Don’t start shit unless you plan to end it.”
This is the wiki page describing the frozen one and how this began back in 1989 and then developed into an annual festival. I was back in New Mexico by 1981 so this is only stuff I’ve heard about. One long-lived event is Alfred Packer Days, a dude who survived a frozen death himself by eating his camp mates one very awful blizzard I think back in the late 1800’s. The Alfred Packer cafeteria is housed at University of Colorado, Boulder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Dead_Guy_Days
I was in the Air Force ROTC during my college years. I think that they still do this, but at the time, the AF ran a program called “Third Lieutenant” wherein during the summer between their Junior and Senior years a student (either ROTC or Academy) would head out to an AF base and tag along with an officer in his chosen career field. It was basically a 2- or 3-week internship.
Anyhoo, I showed up in Boulder late one Saturday night in July of 1978 after my 3 weeks as a Third Lt. and Boulder was electric. By that point I’d seen enough of Boulder to not be surprised by much, but that night was something else. People were everywhere….it seemed that there was a party on every street corner. I had no idea what was going on, but this was no ordinary Saturday summer night in Boulder.
I figured it out the following Sunday morning when the music started.
I had never experienced such desperation to change my locale until I visited Boulder. Roswell, average age 60, compared to Boulder average age 20. Shopping at King Soopers was cause for heart failure… the cash register girls were that hot. KBCO was a fantastic radio station. And live music was constant. I saw Frank Zappa, Spirit, Taj Mahal, Warren Zevon, the Dead, Springsteen and some very talented dudes strumming away on street corners. Never attended the Stones but that must have been an amazing show you saw.
I didn’t mean to mislead….I didn’t go to the concert. I was simply in my apartment just east of the university and heard it from there.
Has Red Rocks been mentioned yet? Because someone should really mention Red Rocks.
I mentioned Red Rocks several paragraphs up. That’s where I saw Joni Mitchell and then a week later the Grateful Dead played there. Weather permitting it’s a fantastic location. I visited Folsom Field for Frank Zappa and saw the Dead there also. Alan Ginsburg lived a block over from me and I watched him read his poem “Howl” one summer day. That town was crawling with critters. I thought you attended the Stones show, but whatever.
Look at that ticket price, for FOUR headlining bands!
$11.50
Wow man, the lives we lived.
Good memories bring many smiles.
We always tried to avoid bags of Gainesville Green. Harsh is being kind.
But sometimes, if that was all the market offered…
Right now, I’d try anything.
I ain’t even SEEN anything in so long let alone actually imbibe.
I have an army buddy in KY that gets regular delivery’s from of all places, Boulder, CO and he sent me this pik a couple weeks ago.
That lucky dawg.
The last time I imbibed was 1985. Prices were getting outrageous… $50 and up for 1/4 oz when it started $10-$15 for a full oz.
Plus, I had just started teaching at the local Safety Council and felt somewhat hypocritical telling people what not to do when I might have been. Leftover Catholic guilt trips.
When I was in Gainesville, the “thing” was Micanopy Madness
The town of Micanopy is/was beautiful. They filmed the Michael J. Fox movie there ‘Doc Hollywood’. That town isn’t far from Cross Creek.
Never heard of Micanopy Madness. Unfortunately.