Philip Spiess

Paul:  I believe I answered this same question at Post #3113 [8-27-2017] when you first asked it at Post #3067 [8-14-2017].  If you have further questions concerning the breweries, I'll try to answer them.

Paul Simons

That's amazing Phil, from 2017 and I have no doubt that you're right! It's an image, a memory that just won't disappear. The big stainless steel tanks and various gauges and pipes back where beer is actually made and then the tap room, warm and cozy on a winter's day - like winter used to be in our younger days - Cincinnati winter with cold grey skies, ice, snow, slush that would stay on the ground for at least a week - not like now where if there was some snow one day it would be 60° and all melted the next. But I digress. No matter. Cincinnati is still a beer drinkin' town. Matter of fact I got to play a tune or two at a bar on Montgomery Road this past summer where I can guarantee a lot of beer was being drunk.

Philip Spiess

Are you sure you're not thinking of a tasting room at Meier's Wine Cellars in Silverton?  (Not that they would have welcomed underage students, either!). Or the soap tanks at Procter & Gamble's Ivorydale?  (But I don't think they had a tasting room.)

Okay, you and the other guys on the alternate site have convinced me to put together more information on Cincinnati breweries than I did in 2017. Coming soon!  (As is "Saratoga Story, Part III:  Con-Spiracy!" -- but first, I'll be out of town next week.)

Dale Gieringer

To answer Paul's question,  beer tasting rooms were not available in Cincinnati when we were in high school.

There were two ways in which we could procure beer:

(1) There were certain indulgent parents, nameless here, who occasionally bought kegs for parties they hosted for their kids' high school friends.  No harm was done, so God bless them.

(2) Before we were 18, but after reaching driving age, we were able to buy 3.2 beer at a pony keg on Reading near Clinton Springs.  I don't recall the name of the store - something like "Jim's."    Jim never asked us for IDs but with a knowing smile sold us quarts of Burger for 50 cents.

   After we turned 18, the trick was to buy 6% beer.  This could be done at a different pony keg on Reading up near the Twin Drive-In.  That's where people got 40-proof vodka for Orange Day.   Alternatively, one could visit Washington DC, where beer and wine were legal, or New York, where all liquor was legal at age 18  (or Wisconsin, where women only could get beer at age 18).   

  The golden ticket for young men to prove they were 18 was to get a draft card.  Our (semi-) classmate Dennis Montgomery did so at the age of 17 in order to buy beer.  The Selective Service wasn't terribly fastidious about asking for proof of age.   This greatly distressed his grandmother because she was a pacifist. She marched Dennis down to the draft board and complained that he wasn't eligible yet, and the Selective Service sheepishly withdrew his registration.  Later,  but well before his 21st birthday, Dennis worked for a while as a bartender at New Dilly's Pub in Mt Adams, where he ticked off us fellow under-21ers  by refusing to serve us drinks. 

You can't get away with bending the age limit anymore ever since the federal 21-year age rule was promulgated.  Personally, I prefer the regime in Germany, where minors can consume beer and wine at age 14 in the presence of an adult custodian, buy it at age 16, and consume hard liquor at age 18.   Note however that the driving age in Germany is also 18.

Paul Simons

Now we're really getting somewhere because a whole new field of inquiry opens up and it is about the other mind-altering items of which we, in 1964, were among the earliest pioneers. No, we didn't have to navigate for example cocaine - what'll it be? Powder or rock (i.e. crack)? or speed - we had fine science teachers but none were cooking meth, no meth labs on school property. Acid? Mushrooms? No, we had it easier, simpler than kids today but on the other hands our cars were exponentially less reliable. But pot - marijuana - was known. But did anyone smoke it in 1964? The true avant-garde were listening to Dylan, still acoustic back then. And we knew about the Seven Cities coffee house, and like Dale mentioned bars in Mt. Adams with jazz and therefore jazz musicians and therefore- what? Personally I got to the party late, whatever party it was, but I can't help wondering who was getting stoned on Friday night only to have to return to the "stately dome" on Monday morning.

Steven Levinson

Paul, I had the impression that Gordon Fankhauser was.

Philip Spiess

Paregoric (camphorated tincture of opium) was the only thing I took in those days -- and then as medicine.  I took it straight, because when my mother gave it to me diluted with water, it tasted disgusting.  So I downed it straight in one gulp, shook my head to recover, and dozed off peacefully.

Jon Singer

Dale is correct. The 3.2% source of quarts was down the short set of stairs at the base of a then apartment building at Clinton Springs and Reading Rd. It was then a short drive to Barry Ave., almost perpendicular to Stillpass Motors where you could enjoy dutch pretzels and Shoenling in quiet among graceful homes.

Paragoric had a distinct taste. Those who could take it off the end of mother's spooning were those with the greatest college abilities to ingest Jaegermeister, which produced an identical oral pleasure.

Paul Simons

Thanks all for the info. It occurred to me that beyond intoxicants kids today have a more complex terrian to navigate than we did, in many ways. Many of you probably know this from personal experience of seeing your own kids move through the school systems. Having no kids I lack this. 

Just thinking about it - nobody in 1964 did tattoos and piercings. The gay/trans thing that fills the news these days was nonexistent. If there was opioid use it was as described by other contributors to this website. There were, as far as I know, no banned books. No iridescent blue hair. But looking at it a bit more deeply and with a bit of knowledge about what my lady friend's grandkids are dealing with now I have to say some things haven't changed. The most important elements were relationships with peers. Back then the word was "popular", now it's "cool", but it all means the same thing.

Back then the country was divided - it always has been. I started loking for books banned in Ohio and I was surprised to find very few. More are banned in the next state to the East, Pennsylvania, where I live. But the big banners of books are Florida and Texas, and Texas might as well close the libraries, they have banned thousands. I realize expressing an opinion is taboo but you know what I'm thinking. 

And there's one more thing. Nobody bought guns into the schools when we were there. This is new and horrific. Again, you know what I'm thinking.

Dale Gieringer

  I never heard about marijuana use while we were in HS.  Many years later I heard from a classmate who said they used pot at parties, perhaps the same ones Gordon F. attended?  I went to a few parties where Gordon was present, but the only drugs there were alcohol and tobacco.  I did hear dark rumors that a couple of our more delinquent classmates dealt in smack and Spanish Fly (!), but if so, never at school.  After graduating from college, I was shocked to hear that  students were openly selling pot and heroin  in the halls of Western Hills High School.  Supposedly they were getting it from older brothers in Vietnam.  The war really spun the country out of control;  it never fully recovered.

As for guns, I'm aware of one instance in which a new transfer student to WHHS was caught with a gun.  He was promptly and quietly expelled.   He was a real gangster type.   

Stephen (Steve) Dixon

I never saw, and certainly never smoked, marijuana while in high school or college. I did do a term paper on illicit drugs, their origins and effects, when I was in college. I got quite an education but was not tempted to partake, at that time.

I will say, though, that there were no doubt a number of people who were gay, during the years that we were in high school. They may not have been practicing gays, or even have it all totally worked out yet. But being gay, in and of itself, is not a recent phenomenon.

Hell, I was devoutly heterosexual in high school, but I didn't get much chance to practice.

Jeff Daum

Steve, I similarlly did not see nor partake in any drugs at WHHS and like you did a paper on illicit drugs while I was at Miami University.  It was part of  a research project I did while earning my degree.in psychology. Though I did not partake in any drugs I had a close friend who did and through him was able to meet and conduct the one on one interviews.

I had to get the dean's permission to conduct the research once the department approved it.  Apparently Miami was some sort of pipeline for heroin and other opioids between Mexico and Canada at the time.  A lot of very schetchy and in some cases, very scary individuals participated in the study.  When it was completed the University initially decided to squash it because of the potential exposure, but finally relented to allowing it count towards my degree.

Florence (Now Jean) Ager

A DRUG-FREE TIME AND PLACE

During my 3 years at WHHS I don't recall even an inkling that illegal drugs could enter into our lives. A similar innocence (as I perceived it) persisted during my years in Oxford, Ohio at Western College. There was, however, a rumor that an upper class woman may have taken LSD and attempted to walk off a roof. But that seemed more a college legend than reality. In 1967 I became a Resident Advisor at Miami.  The dean invited a police officer to educate the advisors about illicit drugs. He described having to drive to Indiana to attain mairihuana as none could be found in Oxford. 

Paul Simons

I have to say that I'm astonished and encouraged by the honesty shown by the police officer in your post Florence. In our era, where body cam video frequently shows statements made by police officers to be - what's the word - disingenuous? Counter factual? Dissembling? Lies? Anyway it's refreshing that the officer admitted to having traveled across state lines to obtain and then to transport a controlled substance. Good for him! Like they say, "Honesty is the best policy!" 

Jeff Daum

Jean and Paul, I guess it depended on how hard the police were looking.  My research was done during the same period (I attended Miami from 1964-1968), and Western's campus, for those not familiar with Oxford, was located right next to Miami's campus.  While drugs were not openly sold, they were readily available.

Florence (Now Jean) Ager

CORRECTION

My tenure as advisor at Miami was very brief, extending only through 1968 and not 1967 as I mistakenly wrote. I was an itinerant that summer, traveling from dorm to dorm. Occasionally students returned intoxicated from drinking 3.2 beer at the Purity. The only infractions, I recall, were of students returning late.

Now, digging deeper into memory, I remember a young man arriving at a Western College dorm in 1967 who asked to see a girl who lived there. He was shaking uncontrollably. No doubt he was a dealer and heavily involved himself.

My first personal encounters with marihuana were in my 30s. There was a "just hired" party at psychology clinic in Maine where I was offered the weed. Maybe a bonding ritual?  Later, when I worked at a suburban school district, a counselor invited several of us for dinner. She passed a pipe around to experience last years crop of marihuana, the current showcased in large pots on her high rise porch. Suddenly she collapsed inside her sliding glass doors! The psych. Intern quickly shut off the spotlights on the "pot " as we debated calling 911. Fortunately, she recovered quickly. It was concluded that she'd had too much vodka before we arrived. 

Now I am used to that pungent, sickening smell when I dare walk the streets of Philadelphia. 

Lee Max

The smell is definitely distinctive. When I'm out on a bicycle ride, and I notice that distinctive smell coming from the car that just passed within 5 feet of my bicycle, that smell triggers fear.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

This discussion about marijuana and cops brought back several memories:
1.   The only time I had even heard of cannabis during my adolescence and young adult life was my from my parents talking about the early jazz musicians who partook of "reefers" and added to lyrics from tunes from the early twenties and thirties.  My dad did explain what it was in terms that would make you want to stay away from ANY illegal substances. My dad started out as a beat cop in 1939, so I'm sure he knew where he could find it.

2. I never saw ( or smelled) marijuana until 1974, when I started dating a young man who worked in the marketing department at Procter and Gamble. He and all of his friends got high regularly. I tried the stuff, but it did absolutely nothing for me. The young man and I were engaged a short time. He had moved to Springfield MA, to work as a marketing director for The Breck Co. (remember Breck girls and shampoos). I visited regularly and during one Thanksgiving weekend, his boss and wife invited us up to their cabin in the Berkshires near Otis.  After riding motorcycles through the woods, and a lovely traditional New England dinner and dessert ,his boss served up beautifully wrapped joints on a tray.  They had rolled the joints from their own home grown plants!! Both I and my fiancé were in hysterics since his boss was always so businesslike at work. We took a picture with one of the plants to commemorate this history !!

3.  To say cops have really changed over the years is an understatement by something that happened to one of my best girlfriends in the late 1970s.  She related a story about an encounter she had with a police officer when she was driving home from downtown, late on a cold snowy night. To put it politely, my friend was known as one to heavily overindulge in libations, but still get behind the wheel.  That particular cold night, an officer pulled her over for improper change of lanes. At that time of night and the snow, no other traffic was around.  She told me that she rolled down the window to her VW Superbeetle, told the officer that it was so cold out, and asked if he wanted a little nip from her bottle to take the chill off.  He actually took a sip, then let her go on her way!! She wasn't as fortunate the next time she got behind the wheel loaded. She had a terrible crash and knocked out all of her teeth (but that's another story).

I forgot to add that back in the day, my boyfriend and I found a stray puppy and decided to keep keep her. He named her "ganja"!  I had to rehome the pup when the manager of the apartment I lived in discovered I had a dog.  A coworker took the dog, but renamed her Pudgy.

Florence (Now Jean) Ager

OF POLICE DISCRETION  in the 1970s 

      I was driving into NYC  for the first time in the 1970s .. In the approach to the city, I realized I was trapped in the wrong lane and was heading toward a bridge. Slowing the car to almost a stop, I was terrified as an officer approached. I sheepishly explained my dilemma.

     With a booming voice he asked, "If you were in Ohio would you cross 7 lanes of traffic?"

     I responded definitively, "No sir."

     He then went on to say, "Well, today you can do it here. Welcome to New York!" He used his megaphone to stop cars as I drove across all lanes and toward the appropriate tunnel. 

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Jean, your police "discretion" story is great. I have one too, but my encounter wasn't as random. I may have already related it in this forum, but unlike Phil, my memory of past comments isn't as clear. 
Some will remember Queen City Avenue, one of the busy streets leading to "the west side" of Cincinnati from the Western Hills Viaduct. It is a one-way street heading west, with several side streets. As I was driving in the center lane but changed over to the left lane in anticipation of having to make a turn further up the street. At the same time, a car turned into the same lane from a side street, and I crashed into it. 
A short time later, one of those huge, leather clad motorcycle officers pulled up to assess the situation. I absolutely knew it was my fault and had no excuse. 
The officer dealt with the person I hit first.  After clearing the traffic, and talking to the man to get his story about what had happened and to check his registration and license , the cop took out his book and wrote the man a ticket for having Kentucky plates on his car. He let the guy move on, then turned to me. 
I was shaking in my shoes, thinking that the cop gave a ticket to the person I hit, I surely was going to get something that might be worse. The big cop, walked over to me, took my license and registration, took off his helmet, looked me in the eyes and said, "Are you Shep's daughter?" I was so afraid and in tears. I told him, "Yes. Shep is my dad." With that, he smiled and patted me on the shoulder. He told me that he had to give me a ticket, but it would be for a fine and not result in a court appearance or points on my driving record.
Back then, it paid to have a "family and friends connection" with the police.

Jon Singer

I got a big dollar (when you are broke) ticket in '64 for going 35 in a 25 zone shortly after acquiring my 10-year-old wheels. I learned my lesson.  Fast forward decades, my children came to abuse me for always going too slow. One beautiful Autumn Sunday afternoon in '04, the wife and I chose the country roads to return from near-Columbus Hocking Hills State Park. We traversed two laners at 45mph, reducing to 35, then to small town 25. Rinse and repeat until rural quiet was busted by flashing lights in my rear-view. A State trouper pulled us to the gravel, reviewed of my certificates and returned to his cruiser to run my plates while we waited in an axious state. "Do you know how fast you were going?" "No." He informed me he had clocked me at 37 in a 25 zone. Oh my. I wasn't Shep's daughter yet he kindly issued me a warning and told me to watch my speed.  As soon as we got home, with pride I called each kid to tell them I had been caught speeding!

I had a less favorable encounter Thanksgiving of 1965 when I brought older brother and his bossom bud back to Cincy from Antioch College for a mother's meal. Post-turkey, I transported them back to Yellow Springs that evening and feeling an invasion of the sand man on my return home near midight, I pulled off the road into the Golden Lamb parking lot for a nap. A State trouper's flashlight awoke me and after an interrogation revealing my purpose, the officer told me, "We don't want your kind here...get out of town." He then followed me until I exited Lebanon's western boundry.  To this day, I don't know what "singular kind" I be. 

Philip Spiess

My father used to tell this story about his childhood, which would have been in the early 1920s (and in the early days of car travel):  He and his full sister, a year or so older than he, were being taken by his much older step-sister and her husband on a car trip north in Ohio, probably to Cedar Point at Sandusky.  Somewhere mid-state they passed through a small Ohio town.  Stopped at a red light before their route turned at a gas station, they waited till the light changed, then proceded on.  Immediately a cop on a motorcycle appeared out of nowhere and pulled them over.  "Skippin' a red light by cutting through the gas station, eh?" he growled at my great-uncle John.  (He had obviously identified an out-of-county license plate and thought to make good on it.)  "That'll be a $25 fine or a night in jail!"

My Aunt Louise (dietitian at Deaconess Hospital in Clifton) was nobody's fool.  She promptly said, "We'll take the night in jail!"  Disbelieving, nevertheless the cop hustled the four of them off to the local small-town jail.  As soon as they were locked in a cell, my aunt started punching, pushing, and shoving the two small kids.  "Now cry, damn you, cry!" she admonished them.  Both being very young children and not knowing what in the world was really going on, my Aunt Dorothy and my father burst into hysterical shrieking and sobbing, bawling their eyes out and caterwauling like the dickens.  About five minutes of this ruckus, and the cop reappeared.  Unlocking the cell door, he said swiftly and in a very irritated tone, "You folks get the hell out of town -- now!"  (And you may be sure they did so!)

David Buchholz

Jadyne and I had not visited Yellowstone or the Tetons in more than fifty years, so we added Glacier to the list, planning to spend three days in each park.  We chose to leave September 10th, knowing that kids would be back in school and snow was a week or two away.  We had beautiful warm sunny days, cold nights, and spectacular scenery.  As a Californian for almost sixty years  I thought I might need a Visa when visiting.  I'm posting a few of the images from the trip, then adding a link to more.

We chose a ranch five miles away from the Tetons to spend our last three days.  Short on amenities, but the sunset view from our room made up for it.

It rained heavily the night before we left.  I hoped that if the sky cleared at sunrise we'd be gifted with the first snowfall of the year on the Tetons.

Signs in West Yellowstone warned us of road construction before Old Faithful, so after sitting for thirty minutes in stopped traffic I just wanted to walk down the road a bit.  Someone said something about a herd of buffalos, but I wasn't worried, thinking that they would be off to the side, not crossing the road right next to me.  I was mistaken.

The fifty-six miles of Glacier's spectacular "Going to the Sun" Road takes the better part of the day, but I loved the hikes to hidden waterfalls just as much.

I have put about fifty more images on my website.  http://www.davidkbuchholz.com/three-parks

Steven Levinson

David, which ranch did you guys stay at in Jackson Hole?

David Buchholz

Steve, it was the Heart Six Ranch, and it wasn't in Jackson Hole.  It was on a road about five miles east of the north end of the park.