The Contemplative Eye

Mary and I went to New Bedford, Mass., not long ago to visit her sister, brother-in-law and niece and to participate in the city’s “open studios” weekend holiday art sale.

The trip eventuated in an excursion to a nearby liquor store, as such trips can, to disburse our profits and learn a thing or two about the latest local microbrews. The manager showed me all the usual suspects, and I said, “No, no, no. I’ve been coming here for years, and I know all these brands. What’s new in the area?”

He then led me down the aisle to an astonishing sight, a stack of 12-packs of Narragansett, a prehistoric beer of southeastern New England that I’d believed had long since gone the way of the trilobite, Whip & Chill, and Sea Hunt.

The manager explained that a fellow formerly of Providence, Rhode Island, had remembered the brand fondly, decided there was room in the market for a nostalgic resurrection, bought the rights to the name, started brewing it again (with the help of an extant Narragansett brewmaster), and aimed to relocate the brewery back to Rhode Island from Rochester, New York, shortly.

Ah, well.

So we bought a 12-pack, naturally (for a mere $7.99, compared to the usual $1.25 or more a bottle for microbrews), stole off to Maine, and have been enjoying it in a mild way ever since.

Narragansett beer, let it be said, is no great shakes. It’s crisp, at best, with possibly a hint of spiciness. And it seems to have a lot of water in it. When I was a kid in Connecticut in the 1950s and ’60s, it had no virtue whatsoever that I’m aware of other than being the chief regional beer of New England (in addition to being, as they say, “well spoken of in the advertisements”). But you’ll recall that in those days, America as a whole was in the middle of a 75-year beer slump, like a Little Ice Age, brewing and drinking weightless, stone-cold weaselwater that was the laughingstock of the planet’s beer drinkers. This makes it difficult to render sensible views on what Narragansett was, is, or should be.

Meanwhile, according to the liquor-store manager, young people in Europe have started drinking old-time American beers like Narragansett—specifically Budweiser—because they’re “light.” Oh, merde! By that reasoning, we should be eating turkey baloney instead of foie gras.

Another brother-in-law, who lives in Appleton, Maine, listened to my tales of Narragansett on the phone this morning and informed me enthusiastically that when he was in college, in the late 1950s, he and a pal used to go skiing by tucking a couple of Narragansett GIQs (behemoth “Great Imperial Quart” bottles) into a snow bank, smuggling one of them onto an old-time enclosed ski lift, drinking it on the way up, skiing down the mountainside, and then starting all over again.

I went to college in New Haven, Connecticut, in the early 1970s, where we enjoyed—or, mostly, laughed at—a local New Haven beer called Hulls. “How is drinking Hulls like making love in a canoe?” the riddle went. Answer: “They’re both fuckin’ close to water.”

As (I am told) the implausibly starchy old mum of an acquaintance of mine used to say, 60 years ago, “My, aren’t we gay….”

By the way, the Narragansett people, bless their hearts, have an amusing little website you might enjoy.

[Above: The Narragansett Brewery in Rochester, New York. Well, no. Actually, it's a paper mill I photographed with my pal Davey when he and I were wandering around Westbrook, Maine, last month, trying to find something interesting to shoot. But I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the mill resembled a beer brewery.]