Two American Writers Confront Lager

Two writers in different eras, the first in 1866, looked at lager in-depth. The first was a journalist, uncredited, signing only as “Hunki-do-ri”. He was probably a Philadelphia scribe, as I discuss elsewhere.

Most reading, regardless of age, probably know the meaning of “hunkydory”: satisfactory, alright, okay. It’s not quite antiquated – David Bowie used it to title an album, after all. The phrase first gained popularity during the Civil War.

Hunki-do-ri’s comic style has a slightly surreal, or fabulist, edge reminding of Monty Python, Jonathan Winters, or Robin Williams. So while 1866 is a long ago, the piece has a rather contemporary feel.

In the 1860s an issue preoccupied America: is lager intoxicating? Because it was relatively new in the country, less strong than ale or porter, and associated with Central European immigration, lager wasn’t understood well.

Court cases and journalistic reports considered the drink and its habitats, and the extent to which it should be regulated. This is a fecund area for the social history of American beer.

In earlier posts I cited instances of this journalism, and we can add this 1866 example. Hunki-do-ri decides to spend a day drinking lager in different settings, to understand the nature of the drink. Whence a journey that began at the breakfast hour and only concluded at bedtime!

He started this way:

9 A.M. —Took a glass of lager at a Third street saloon. Exceedingly cooling to the system. It diffuses a gentle and agreeable exhilaration throughout the brain.

9.05 A.M. —Took another glass with brown bread, salt, and cardamon seeds. Thoughts run in agreeable channels. Disposed to look leniently upon the frailties of humanity. Wouldn’t refuse to receive cash in full from a debtor, or force money upon a man I owed. Pat the head of a little Dutch* baby that toddles by me. Am carried back in imagination to the days of my youth (which the nights of my mature years had put out of my head somewhat.) …

The tone is set with a second drink taken unnaturally quickly. He is parodying the reputation of lager for machine-like consumption, with some drinkers regularly downing dozens of glasses (the stacked mugs at today’s Oktoberfests is an echo).

Hunki-do-ri does not really concern himself with the German-ness of lager, its (then) cultural face in America. Many at the time viewed German-Americans in stereotypical and often denigrating terms, with lager a usual part of the picture.

He makes a couple of cultural observations, e.g. a “spiced” bread, probably rye with caraway or similar, but mainly avoids the ethnic putdown.

In general the tone is humorous, upbeat, finally riotous.

A counterpoint is Bob Brown writing on the Turner Park Beer Garden outside Chicago in his book Let There be Beer (1932). It forms part of the chapter “An American Beerhood”  see pp. 114 et seq.

I discussed this book earlier, almost completely overlooked in American beer studies.

Bob Brown was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. He had an arch, rollicking, digressive style, with historical accuracy not always a strong point. But there seems little doubt the Turner Park beer garden existed.

The period is circa-1900. Brown locates the park six miles outside the Chicago suburb of River Forest, reachable by foot he said  through forest or on water.

Turner Park, he adds, was named for a “gymnast” in German, or turner (the masculine noun). A Turnverein club seems to have met at this park.

Gymnastic and social clubs had spread through German-American society in the last part of the 1800s.

Brown wrote that “among rustic tables standing four-square to hold the stagger of thick glass mugs”, the “brew-master” “ran the place single-handed, milled the malt, brewed the beer, and waited on tables…”.

The best time was in spring when “Bock was on tap, dew was on the firecracker green grass, froth fresh on the seidel”.

(How many reading me know that firecrackers came in forest green as well as red?).

Brown further tells of “Joe”, the protagonist, almost certainly a young Bob Brown. Joe flees the starchy, orderly, officially dry confines of River Forest for the pleasures of “outlawed” Turner Park.

Written two generations after Hunki-do-ri’s piece, Brown’s account expressed a frank sympathy with German-American ways. By contrast, he portrayed old-stock citizens in River Forest as judgmental, prejudiced, hypocritical.

There is clearly some exaggeration here, given Brown’s florid style, but the contrast drawn is striking still, with the “foreign customs” of “Dutch-town” contrasted to “padded”, “tailor-made”, “Bible class” River Forest.

Brown wrote that Joe and his classmates were hard on the Dutch (ie. German) kids. They made fun of their language and customs “from a safe distance”, he notes.

Joe visited the beer garden, or stube as Brown also called it, in all seasons. In winter he would skate six miles down the (Des Plaines) river to reach it.

Due to the exertions needed to return home no evidence of intoxication showed on re- appearance, but his mother did notice a diminishing of the household supply of “cloves” (chewed to mask alcohol). She guessed Joe and his father were tippling, but seems to have condoned it.

As support tyhat Turner Park and its beer garden/stube existed, see this Illinois historical study c. 1998. It states the associated gymnastic club was a branch of one in Decatur, with an adjacent beer garden.

The garden ran from 1896 at least until 1914 although an early form of Turner Park originated about 1875.

A news piece of September 1875 described a German shooting fest at the park, and the availability of lager at “stands” is mentioned, so 1875 sounds about right for an early version of the park.

A community called River Grove grew around and now harbours some 10,000 but park itself seems to have vanished.

Bob Brown was born in 1886. And Oak Park is two and a half miles from River Forest…

Still a drink of some mystery in 1866, by 1900 lager had almost completely taken over American brewing. The earlier ale and porter continued vestigially, until revived by modern craft brewing.

N.B. For general background on the emergence of beer gardens in Chicago after the Civil War, including as connected to the Turners, see Perry Duis’ The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston 1880-1920, at pp. 154 et seq.

Note re image: image above, of Des Plaines river in winter, is sourced from the Lake County Forest Preserves Site, here. All intellectual property belongs solely to lawful owner. Used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

……………..

*Means German here, probably.

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