Fred Eckhardt Oral History Interview, July 23, 2014

TEM: Now say "Test test."

FE: Test test.

TEM: And introduce yourself.

FE: Introduce yourself. [All laughing] That's what she said! "Say 'Test test' and...

TH: Yes, that's what she said!

FE: [Laughter] I'm Fred. Fred Eckhart.

TEM: And we're in Portland.

FE: And we're in Portland. But you might want to hear the rest, because this is the story of how I got my name.

TEM: Yes.

FE: My name was Otto, but I didn't know that. I thought I was Fred. So then, in 1940, when Hitler invaded Norway, this was a Norwegian Lutheran Children's home up in Everett. And in 1940, one of the ladies there, she grabbed me and she said, "You know, your name is not Fred, it's Otto!!!!" So I had the war on my uh... head. [Laughter]

TH: Yeah! Wow!

FE: And so, but that's how I first found out my first name was Otto. So when I went into the Marine Corps, whenever there was anything serious, they would always call "Otto". So that's my gub'ment name. [All laughing] And Fred was my name, but you know, if you're Fred Otto Eckhart, then you got a nice name, FOE. But if you're Otto Fred Eckhart, it's OFE! [All laughing] I didn't really apreciate that at ten! [Laughter] Well I was fourteen by the time I... By the time the war got going far enough for me to realize there was a genuine war there.

TH: Did you know - when did you learn that you were adopted? Did you know that -

FE: Uh, well, I did. When I came home, somehow, when I got out of the children's home, maybe. Yeah. At 15 or so. And in the children's home, when I got home to our house, there was a big - well, you were asking - what was the question again?

TH: When you learned that you were adopted?

FE: Oh right. Naturally, I was a natural fifteen-year-old, so I wandered around reading everybody's documents and pearing at all the envelopes, and investigating all the empty spots in the house. Nobody there to tell me not to. And I wouldn't have paid attention anyway. But it was kind of fun. But then I found my adoption papers! So I didn't say anything, but I was hurt. I - we lived a block from the Snohomish County Courthouse, and I went out and I sat down under a tree up there, and I cried for an hour. Because I thought I was going to lose my mother. Not - My adopted mother was great, and I thought "This is it, you're going to lose your mother." And I cried my eyes out up there. But I lived through it, so...

TH: You don't remember California? [Unintelligible 00:03:15]?

FE: No I don't remember anything - well, one bus down there. My mother got pissed at me because I called a black lady a nigger, and my mother wasn't gonna let that happen! So, we didn't get to use that word either... But that's how I learned not to use that word. [Laughter]

TH: Where was the home that you were talking about?

FE: Everett.

TH: Oh.

FE: Oh, the children's home is in Everett, yeah.

TH: Oh.

FE: And uh, it was fun.

JF: And then you went there because you stole all those valve caps? Is that why? [Laughter]

FE: Well, that was my mother's excuse. I don't know that she'd told anybody that I'd stolen 'em, but... Valve caps. I think she probably hid them and let whoever lost their valve cap figure out what happened to it. Uh, [Laughter] so then, when I got out of the reserve units, when I got out of the Marine Corps, I found out a lot of other stuff about my adoption, and uh, but I hadn't - I knew most of it, so it surprised my mother that I knew all this stuff. And it surprised me that she didn't know that I knew it. [Laughter]

TEM: How many people were in the children's home?

FE: Uh, 65 maybe, something like that. Seems like there were 30-some boys and 30-some girls. And it was a nice place, I mean, these were nice Norwegian ladies. Nobody got a spanking - well, hardly anybody got a spanking. In an era when, you know, "Spare the rod, spoil the child". 'Cause the only spanking involved that I can think of, is this other kid and myself were jumping off the locker onto the beds, and apparently they didn't like that. The supervisor caught him, not me. And he got a spanking right then and there. And then he snitched on me! "But Freddie did it too!" [All laughing] And Art just looked at him and said, "I caught you, not Fred." [All laughing] For once, Freddie saved me. [Laughter]

TH: So I'm confused about the chronology. When were you in the home? What age were you...

FE: I went in there at 9, shortly before my tenth birthday. And I got out when I was about 15 or so, to go to - go back with my mother.

TH: And you had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Eckhart?

FE: Mm-hmm.

TH: In San Francisco? Or up in Washington?

FE: Yeah, in San Francisco.

TH: Oh okay.

FE: Yeah, but they'd separated, and in fact I don't remember - I may have met my stepfather, but I don't really know. I ain't worried about it either. I didn't worry about much of anything. [Laughter] Once you start worryin', you've got to go on doing that the rest of your life! [All laughing]

TH: Yeah, that's not a good path to go down, is it? [Laughter]

TEM: So then, you were in Washington when you were fifteen. Then, what happened after that?

FE: Well, I went to work at the paper mill because we needed money. My mother didn't have enough money. She was getting 35 cents an hour, something like that. They didn't pay very much in those days. No maybe 60 cents an hour. Anyway, but I got 35 cents an hour there, and when I went in the Marine Corps, they were paying 50 dollars a month. 54 dollars a month, something like that. The Marine Corps was a nice diversion. Well, sort of. [Laughter]

JF: When did you enlist?

FE: Oh, that would have been 19...

TH: Was the war on already?

FE: Yeah, 'cause I was out in the Sea Scout boat, and every day, when the war started, in fact, we were listening to the report of the Japanese attack on the radio on the Sea Scout boat, I was in the Sea Scouts. I was 15 that year, I think. Somewhere in there. And... It was nice. Anyway, I had... Everybody treated me nice. I mean, it was not - and if I didn't get treated nice, it was my own fault.

TH: [Laughter] I don't think it made it on the tape, so, can you say what your birth name was, and your birth family?

FE: Yeah, oh, birth name. William Right Cuddihee [Sp? 00:08:02] Junior. Yeah.

TH: And they were from San Francisco?

FE: They were - I think so, yeah. I have a newspaper from that day, May 10th, 1926, and it has in there, their names. And I didn't get adopted 'til several days after that, I guess.

TH: And they were Irish.

FE: You have to remember, I wasn't always paying attention.

TH: You're kidding. At that age? [All laughing] What do you remember about Everett?

FE: A place I wanted to get out of, so I could get on with my life, [Laughter] somehow. That's how I got a job at the paper company, which is right outside of town. And then, I also got - when I joined the Marine Corps, I joined the Marine Corps because I knew if I joined the army - had a nice war going on, you could pick and choose - yeah, if I joined the army, I would get stuck in Everett somehow. And I knew if I joined the Air Corps - they didn't have an Air Force - I would get stuck at the airport there, and I knew, if I joined the Navy, I would get stuck at the naval yard, across the bay there. So, and I didn't want any of those places. I wanted to get out of there. So, [Laughter] I joined the Marine Corps! They didn't have a marine base anywhere near there! [All laughing] That's how I got in the Marine Corps. Searching for a place to stay, out of the service.

TH: How quickly did you go to Korea?

FE: Well that was afterwards, when the Korean war started. This was during World War II.

JF: Yeah, 'cause you were in the Pacific...

TH: Oh. you enlisted during World War II.

FE: Yeah, 1943. I was seventeen that year.

TH: Oh!

FE: There was no place else to go.

TEM: Where did you do training then? Was that -

FE: In the Marine Corps?

TEM: Yeah.

FE: San Diego.

TEM: Okay.

FE: Boot camp.

TEM: And how long was training?

FE: Uh, ten weeks comes to mind, but it may not have been that long. I'm not sure. I wasn't paying attention, as usual.

TEM: [Laughter] But then, you went to Japan straight from there?

FE: No, I went down to California where, actually, apparently, I'm smarter than they thought I was. 'Cause they'd always send me somewhere, and then two minutes later, they'd send me to some more complicated place. [All laughing] So I ended up with an assignment to go to flight radio school! And, you know, you have to have some brains for that, I didn't realize I had brains, at that point in my life, but it seemed to me they did. And so, that's where I was in the Marine Corps! You know, like uh, we went to Okinawa, on a... Well, they had changed me - first of all, they had too many radio operators. So they put me in an infantry outfit, okay, climbing, [Unintelligible 00:11:24], and that sort of thing, which is what I did. And then when we went to Okinawa, the - what happened in Okinawa was that the - there was no Okinawa. Oh, I was there as an infantryman. But when I got there, they had all of them that they needed, and they sent me over to the [sounds like "air wing" 00:11:52] which had just arrived the day before that. And they had all the radio operators in the world there. And they didn't need me for that either! So I just sort of - they put me on mess duty, you know, I was scrubbing pots and pans. The beauty of that was, in the Battle of Okinawa, I got every 3rd day off - in the Marine Corps, if you're on Mess Duty, and you get assigned pots and pans, you get every 3rd day off. I had every 3rd day off in the Battle of Okinawa. And I used to wander the island, [Laughter] bumming a ride. [All laughing] It was a fun war while it lasted. [All laughing] Then I got out, and... Now here, that gives me a fair amount of free education, so I went for a year, back in Massachussettes, learning how to teach swimming and stuff like that there. And then, I went to some other school. Oh - I hadn't graduated from high school. So I went to uh, this was Everett High School that I hadn't graduated - my mother had gotten me a diploma, but she got me in the wrong class. It didn't do me any good. [All laughing] And not only that, but they all knew it somehow, that my diploma was a waste of everybody's effort, including my mother's. [Laughter] So there I was, and there they were, and there we were. But the fascinating thing is, I got - where was I...

TH: What high school you went to.

FE: Oh yeah - well I needed to go to high school to go to college! To go to the University of Washington! So I went two years to Everett Community College, and graduated - I got an Associate's Degree in Communications Engineering! Now, you would have thought I would have satisfied them for high school. No.

TH: No?

FE: No way. No way at all. No, that was not gonna do it. Not to get into the University of Washington. The presigious University of Washington. So, in there, then, I had to take a year's worth of pre-college classes. And the same years worth again, for a second year, for college classes. Same thing. Two years of whatever it was. And so there I was, and there they were, and there we were. [All laughing] Then, the - I finally graduated - was it '52...? Somewhere in there. No, the Korean War, it was after the Korean War that I graduated. I'm not sure about that part! The dates I can find out, but...

JF: Fred, you did fly in World War II though, right?

FE: Yeah. We flew a lot of different areas. I was flying in Korea. Well, that was during the Korean War.

JF: Yeah.

FE: The flights I did in World War II were in this country, training.

JF: Uh-huh? Um... Tell the story - let's see. There's a couple stories. But, you told me a story once about how you figured out that the person who could make alcohol was king. And I think it had to do with the [sounds like "gunnery" 00:15:36] sergeant -

FE: Yeah, the head of the chef's department there, kitchen or whatever, was a brilliant guy, but his booze was very good. Hand-distilled, and everybody loved him. And I thought that was pretty good. Even though I didn't really particularly care for hard liquor at that point in my life. It was fun.

JF: But that's where - I mean, that's where you kind of figured out the importance of being able to make alcohol, right?

FE: Yeah. Yeah.

TH: Gave you a little more clout?

FE: It certainly gave him plenty of clout. [All laughing] But, you know, here I am, I've got any school I want to go to, because, now, the Korean War! And I'm building up a whole new repertoire of schools I can go to! I don't know how many - I took flying lessons, dancing lessons, [all laughing] what else? [Laughter] I can't remember what else. But whatever I wanted, I could get. [Laughter]

TEM: Well that had to be pretty incredible - going back to World War II - from being in Everett, then to being in Okinawa, being able to explore the island.

FE: Well it took us 55 days to get there.

TEM: Whew!

FE: It's a long trip. Takes all the fun out of being on a boat.

TH: Wow. Did you ever consider a career in the Marines?

FE: No, because I stayed in the reserves! Which is how I ended up in the Korean War. And uh, yeah, I had - I was enjoying myself. I know how to [laughter] get around things. But uh, anyway...

JF: Tell us the story about um, about the - was it your dad's homebrew?

FE: My stepdad's homebrew. Yeah, we didn't get my original. Adopted father. And, he kept it in the closet, and I accidentally - I guess I kicked it, I'm not sure. But the bottle fell, and the cap blew up, and there was beer all over the place. And nobody saw me. I quickly got out of there, and when my mother discovered it, she blamed my stepfather. And I kept my big mouth shut. [All laughing] And he didn't know, because, you know, they did tip over in those days. And they did explode.

JF: Tell us the recipe that he used.

FE: Oh! One crock, which held - you put ten pounds of sugar, a package of pear yeast - what kind of yeast do they have? It's the standard yeast.

JF: You mean, just like baking yeast? I'm not thinking of it, but...

FE: Yeah. Yeah. Package of yeast, and 10 gallons of water, and a can of hop-flavored malt extract! Which you got for $3.50 and it was a three-and-a-half pound can. And so there we were, there I was, and... [All laughing] Trying to pay attention, but you know, once you start paying attention, they... really expect you to go on doing that. [All laughing]

TEM: Did you taste the beer? After you kicked it over, did you taste it?

FE: No way! I hid! I got out - but you don't know that trouble that would've caused! Oh! I would've been in that children's home a lot quicker. [Laughter]

JF: [Laughter] You did end up drinking some of that beer, right? I mean, some of your stepdad's beer?

FE: Oh I did taste it, yeah. Uh-huh. Further down the road was a kid whose father made homebrew. We both tasted our father's homebrew. And they both tasted lousy. [Laughter] But you know, in that era, had they had my recipe, in the Treatise on Lager Beer, had they had that information, on how to actually do a wart at home, if that had been available in 1919, Prohibition would have been a total failure. [All laughing] Instead of just an accidental failure. I mean it really would, 'cause nobody would have made that crap. And everybody would know - everybody in the planet, of that era, would know how to make good beer at home. We'd have had the beer thing in about 2 weeks. [Laughter]

TH: So, over in Okinawa, when you were over there, was there beer, or just...

FE: Uh, well, we all got a beer issue. And...

TH: Was it American? Or was it...

FE: No, it's American, this was early in the war, we weren't dealing with that aspect of the war. Free beer. [Laughter] There it was 5 cents a bottle.

JF: And were they all different brands? Schlitz and Bud and...

FE: Yeah. Yeah. Coors wasn't there. Miller's, and Schlitz and Bud.

TH: Did you have a choice?

FE: Well, you didn't always get a choice, but somebody had a choice, and you got whatever they chose to give you. [Laughter] But it didn't matter anyway, you know. Because I wasn't a fan of beer. But it was kind of fun. and I didn't want to - I didn't overdo it. I couldn't smoke because I couldn't inhale, I couldn't drink because I couldn't stand the idea of getting... I couldn't have any fun drunk if I was gonna stay sober. [All laughing] The other way around. Whatever. [All laughing] But I've always enjoyed myself. But you know, I roamed up and down the island. The Japanese had a little corner down here. And, [laughter] we had the rest of it. And uh, I had every third day off. Even the generals didn't get a day off. In fact, our commanding general, Lieutenant General Simone Bolivar Buckner, was - when he declared the island secure, June 21st of 1945, if I'm not mistaken, and I probably am, but he was there, and uh, right after he declared the island secure, a Japanese sniper got him. He got killed. One of our few generals that got killed in World War II. Got killed at the end of it. Lieutenant General Simone Bolivar Buckner. They named the bay after him. Nakagusuku Wan got renamed Buckner Bay.

TH: Wow.

FE: But it's back to Nakagusuku Wan now. Surprised that I remember that name, huh? So am I. [All laughing]

JF: So when did you start becoming a beer connoisseur? Assuming that you are.

FE: Uh, yeah, I wouldn't - well, I was teaching swimming, and then I got a job teaching winemaking because I wanted to make wine, and uh...

TH: Why'd you want to do that? What brought you there?

FE: Well, because I liked wine! And I hadn't given any thought to making beer. But then, on the other hand, after I had been teaching wine for a while, I got to thinking, "You know, I could make beer with my father's recipe!" And then I thought, "Wait, no, you don't want that." [All laughing] So we put together a decent - a halfway-semi-nearly-but-not-quite-decent, beer. And uh, we let it go at that. But uh, oh, Okinawa was, you know, a fascinating place, just to - if you're wandering around there, you're a white soldier, in uniform, wandering around a battlefield, that's not exactly a sensible way to live your life! [All laughing]

TEM: Was there - were they doing any sort of brewing in Japan? Did you come across...

FE: No, they hadn't done that yet. Japanese beer. They didn't start that - that was in the uh... I used to visit there, and in fact, I did my little show at Popeye's, a bar in Tokyo, which, something like a hundred different Japanese um... [Sounds like "these" 00:24:50] beers. And they made good beer. And uh, that was kind of a fun episode. Free beer is always fun. [All laughing]

TH: So, at UW, what were you studying there?

FE: Well, when I was still in the Marine Corps, I started studying Japanese, because we wanted to occupy Japan, and if you knew Japanese, you could do a lot more of entertaining and whatever else you wanted to do. And so, that seemed to be a good idea. And then, so since I had spent a year studying Japanese, when I got back I thought, "Well, you know, uh, maybe I can major in this!" So, at the University of Washington, I majored in Far Eastern Languages and Literature. Which is what my degree is in. And that was kind of a fun episode. Not that I learned anything, but, I did make it to drink some beer. [All laughing] And booze. But I had started teaching winemaking to some home winemakers, and then uh, I just thought, "You know, if you put this effort and try to make the kind of beer that you've been making wine - it might actually be good stuff!" So, that's when I started following the procedures - I've got this old textbook, and there's a story in one of them that, the - in Dortmund, King Frederick the Great would go through Dortmund, and they would offer him - now, in Japan, you don't get a glass of beer - well you do in [Unintelligible 00:26:26], but no place else. You don't get a glass of beer. You get a thing like that, that's your glass, and that's what you got. And so, that's what I got, and I thought, "That's what the king got!" And it's really strong beer. The beer they were giving me was a high class, strong, 12 percent beer. 13 percent beer. And the king drank, apparently, a whole gunnysack full of it, and they nearly killed their king that way! [All laughing] This is King Frederick the Great. [Laughter] And uh, that was kind of a profile on a beer to be thinking about. You know, I was able to actually track down the formulation for it, you know, the original gravity, uh, the hop level, all kinds of stuff. Just, not what kind of ingredients, but then, on the other hand, I had just visited Dortmund, and I had learned what they were using there! Dortmund was making an [sounds like "alt" 00:27:38]-beer! So I thought, "Well, whatever they gave the king was going to have been that beer strong." And so then, I used - I used the characters, the figures I found in this book for the measurements, but I used the Dortmund alt-beer regimens. And so the beer came out pretty good, and we called it uh... What's the name of the beer out there? ["Atom" or "Adam" 00:28:15] Beer. And so I made a batch of that, and took it down to the Oregon Brew [Unintelligible 00:28:19], and they all liked it and thought it was pretty good. And uh...

JF: Is that where Alan -

FE: Yeah. He made it. Hendersen is his name, I think.

JF: Right. Doug Hendersen.

FE: Yeah. Doug Hendersen. Yeah, it was fun, and they were - I actually put together a formulation for 'em. And they were able to make a good beer, and because they were so grateful, they made another beer, a paler version, and called it "Fred"! So, Adam and Fred, four-letter names! And it appears to have been four letters ever since. [All laughing] It's a strange story.

TEM: So going back to your time at UW, when did you graduate from college? What year was that?

FE: I uh...

TH: I found it in the paper: 1958.

FE: That's probably correct, yeah. I got a little book on the table at home, which tells me when I graduated, [laughter] because I - but don't ask me to remember when it happened. [Laughter]

TEM: So then, how long did you stay in Seattle?

FE: 'Til I could get away. [Tiah laughs]

TH: You didn't like Seattle?

FE: Nono, I like Seattle. Yeah. Seattle's always good. Uh... Not very long though. Uh... Yeah.

TEM: Well was that - so, and Seattle was where you started teaching wine-making classes, right?

FE: Yes. Right. Oh no, that was Portland!

TEM: That was Portland?

FE: Yeah.

TEM: Okay.

FE: There was... Anyway, it was Portland. On Broadway, at about 28th is a little store that sold the makings for beer and wine and whatever else.

TH: Downtown?

FE: It's not - well, it's sort of, it's 28th.

JF: So, East side, right?

FE: Yeah. And uh, that was kind of fun.

TH: Almost to Fred Meyer.

FE: If it wasn't gonna be fun, I didn't do it.

TEM: [Laughter] So this is back when the kits probably said "Don't mix this stuff together because you'll get beer"?

TH: The wine kits?

TEM: Yeah. [Tim laughs]

FE: Yeah. Yeah. Well that was during the Korean War, or during Prohibition. Yeah. [Laughter]

TEM: Could you get ingredients then, easily, to make beer, before -

FE: Well, the canned malt extract, yeah.

TEM: Okay.

FE: Wasn't any good, but uh... [All laughing] You could get a three-and-a-half pound can, hop-flavored malt extract. Ten pounds of sugar, ten gallons of water, wait two weeks, bottle it, wait another week, drink it, make another batch! [All laughing]

JF: Repeat that as needed.

FE: But you see, nobody ever learned how to make the basics at home! And that's what I put in my book, was, you know, you could actually brew the beer like breweries do, and uh, I didn't plan the book to be... anything in particular, I just wanted to put out there what people could do. Had that book had been available, and that material, in 1919, people would have picked up brewing at home about as fast as they did when it got going here! And it would've been a lot better, 'cause Prohibition would have been a complete, total, absolute, 100% pure ff...flavor - uh - [Laughter]

TH: "Flavor" sounds good! [Laughter]

TEM: [Unintelligible 00:32:03][Laughter]

FE: At least that's my theory.

JF: Well, as it is, I mean... You and Charlie started the good beer...

FE: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, Charlie put together this group of home brewers down in Colorado. I always get the credit for a lot of the stuff that's really not my - I don't deserve the credit. I just don't. I'm trying to remember why...

TH: There's a great quote that I found, Charlie credits you as being the one who got the American homebrew movement going, and your quote was, "No, actually, he's the one that saved American beer. All I did was throw it up in the air and see if it came down on its own two feet." [All laughing]

FE: Yeah.

TH: So, we're bouncing around a bit, but I wonder, from, when you were in the war, in the Marine Corps, did you develop the taste for saké at that point?

FE: Uh, no, not 'til after the war when I went to visit Japan. Well, you know, because I was interested - I'd been drinking wine and beer, and here's saké, and I, you know, got a chance to try some of that, halfway decent. Uh, as a matter of fact, I love saké. There's an awful lot of saké breweries in Japan. [Laughter]

TH: Seems like you went from saké and wine and then you went into winemaking, and then you came to beer!

FE: No, I went - the beer was - after beer it's saké.

TH: Oh.

FE: I think. You're trying to get me to remember something! First thing you know, I'll be sitting over here, trying to remember my name! It's Otto. Don't forget. OFE. [Laughter]

TH: So, I'm trying to put in context, too; at least in Oregon, kind of the Oregon winemakers first showed up in the early mid-Sixties?

FE: Something like that, yeah.

TH: Was there anything going on in Washington before that? Washington State?

FE: Uh, they came out about the same time Oregon did. Yeah. Except they didn't have the backup publicity that Oregon winemakers got.

TH: Oh. So when you started winemaking, there wasn't really active vineyards in Washington?

FE: Nono. I was just drinking, you know, get a bottle of juice and go for it. It was fun. I learned a lot. And I had nice glasses, everybody seemed to like me, I couldn't understand that part of it, but...

TEM: [Laughter] Did you know people in the Sixties that were winemakers in Oregon?

FE: I met them in that class, yeah. Anne, what was her name? She was a nice lady! Anne... Nevermind. I'd forget my name if it wasn't a- I'd forget my butt if it wasn't attached! [All laughing]

TH: Well, it is interesting - I don't know how - what was going on in Washington, but of course in Oregon, like the Ponzis and... I'm forgetting his name...

TEM: Chuck Corey?

TH: Chuck Corey.

FE: Yeah.

TH: You know, went from winemaking to the first microbrewing in Oregon.

FE: Yeah. Yeah. And then, the fella from England. What was his name? He was a nice guy too. Um...

JF: Not Michael Jackson?

FE: No, another...

JF: Oh. Was he a brewer here?

FE: Yeah, he had a brewery finally, over in Washington, and then here. I can't think of his name either.

TH: Oh, Burt Grant?

FE: Burt Grant! Yes.

TH: He was English?

JF: That was the "nice guy". That threw me off. [All laughing]

FE: You knew him?

JF: Yeah, I knew him.

FE: And you didn't think he was...

JF: Well, he was uh, a character, but see, you were an equal, and I was not. I was a mere sprout. So... [Laughter]

FE: [Laughter] You just got older recently. [All laughing] I'm not gonna tell everybody you were 67.

TH: Happens all of a sudden. But yeah, Burt was really early.

JF: Yeah.

FE: Yeah.

TH: Was he into wine too? Or...

FE: Uh... That, I can't remember! I don't remember him doing anything with wine. Probably not. Yeah. But what he wanted to do was to make a brewpub! And he did! He did.

JF: The first one, right?

FE: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then uh, the - we couldn't - well, for one thing, you ferment in the bottle, in real beer. Well, in this kind of beer anyway. And that's how it gets carbonated. So, we had that kind of beer, and it's hard to get people to do that, so, what we would try to do is to work on it so that it would be easier, and you could manage it, and it makes life a lot simpler. Not that simplicity does it, but it gives you something to drink. [All laughing] Anyway, it was fun. Boy, it really was.

TH: Kind of moving along with that topic, and Burt Grant, and Washington being ahead of Oregon by a few years, um, you know, it turns out that you started your column - I don't know if it was the first newspaper you wrote for, but the Seattle Times [Unintelligible 00:38:42] column, almost three years before the Oregonian!

FE: Yeah. Yeah.

TH: So, was the scene much more advanced up there, or [Unintelligible 00:38:47]?

FE: No, just more friendly, you might say. I'm not sure. You're always trying to get me to think, remember, if you start thinking, you're gonna have to do it the rest of your life! [All laughing]

TH: But lets see, I mean, Burt Grant, and [Unintelligible], and Red Hook were all early Eighties.

FE: Yeah, the Red Hook guys, we had - they had a brewmaster that they picked up from Rainier, I think. I'm not sure. Can't remember his name. But uh...

TH: From Rainier, is that right?

FE: I think. You're talking on Fred theories here now.

TH: [Laughter] "Fred Theories". [Laughter]

FE: And they aren't always accurate. [All laughing]

JF: But they're alwas interesting.

TH: Yeah.

FE: Well, [laughter] "inventive" is a better word. [Laughter] But it was a lot of fun.

JF: So uh, is that when Red Hook was brewing that famous banana -

FE: Yeah, yeah. And it was good!

JF: Was it?

FE: Yes, that beer was - McMenamins had - not Mike, but his brother, what's his name?

JF: Brian.

FE: Brian. Brian had a little bar, near the airport if I remember correctly. And we would go over there and have meetings, and Michael Jackson would come by, and... Different people, and they would talk about beer. And then, women were the ones who picked it up. Men would stay about 3 feet away from it, you know. The average woman would come there and grab it and run with it. [Laughter] It had flavor. [Laughter]

TH: They didn't bottle that, did they? It was just draft? Banana beer?

FE: Yeah.

JF: Well, [Unintelligible 00:40:39].

FE: It was pretty good.

JF: People call it banana beer now because of the flavor.

FE: Yeah.

TH: Oh I see.

JF: It was pretty [Unintelligible 00:40:55].

FE: Yeah. It was pretty good, it was good beer, just different, you know? You're not used to a beer like that. On the other hand, it's still beer. [Laughter]

TH: So I have a good question, um, you wrote your book in '69 or '70? '69 was it?

FE: Uh, no, I - my book was '71. Somewhere in that neighborhood.

TH: And so, were you encouraging - I mean you were brewing, but were you encouraging these other homebrewers to start doing something more commercial?

FE: No, Charlie Papazian did that part of it. That's why he doesn't get the credit for that, and I always get the credit as though I invented homebrewed beer! And uh, I didn't! I just... I did set it up so people could do it, so any idiot could brew beer halfway decent, and the idiots all did of course, but... [Laughter]

TH: Well I know Mike and Brian have always said that, you know, you were the pivotal person, at least in this -

FE: Be sure they get those pictures.

TH: Yes, I will. Thank you. The pivotal person who really shown the light into the darkness for these guys, you know, in this area. And Charlie's influence wouldn't have reached, necessarily, up into the northwest at that point!

FE: Yeah, well, maybe not.

TH: But I'm wondering, I mean, did you come to know most of these early um...

FE: Well, not to know them intimately or anything like that, but, you know, they were nice people, and you could talk to them, and I frequently did, and it was kind of nice meeting people like uh... whoever they were. [All laughing]

TH: "Whoever they were" [Laughter]

FE: Oh Fred. If only me poor dear mother could see me now. The depths I've sunk meself to! The people I've associated meself with! [Laughter]

TH: Well I think it's at least safe to say that you championed their cause, and that you certainly promoted it in your articles, and...

FE: Oh yeah. Well, I had fun at that. If it wasn't fun, I wouldn't have done it. [Laughter]

TEM: So, going back to the start of your work writing about beer, you started The Amateur Brewer in...

FE: Well, yeah, because then I could put my strange recipes in. And then descriptions on what hops do and stuff like that. Actually, it was as fun publication. Who did I sell it to? I don't remember. Anyway, they paid me good money, and I took it and ran with it, off to England for a trip with Michael Jackson. [Laughter] We had a great trip together though. Michael dragged me to every bar in England, I think. I loved every minute of it. [All laughing] Yeah. It was fun. Beer is always fun.

TEM: Yeah. So, how wide was the distribution of that publication? Like, 300, 400 people?

FE: Not all that much. Uh, maybe a hundred, I'm not sure. Now you're asking for memory.

TEM: It can be an "-ish" memory.

FE: Yeah, well, a hundred comes to mind, but maybe a little more than that.

TEM: Was it throughout the country?

FE: Yeah. Yeah. And then, I wrote the Treatise on Lager Beer, based on the information I dug up accidentally. And the lager beer thing really was - that's a good publication, it really is. It tells a lot of things about making beer at home. You could actually start a brewery on that book.

JF: Maybe a lot of people did.

FE: Yeah, I expect they did. Yeah.

JF: How many copies did that sell?

FE: Hmm. Probably uh...

JF: Sounds like a lot more.

FE: Yeah, but not a heck of a lot. How many did I sell? You guys are pumping my memory, and I don't have a memory! I sent it home! [All laughing] It's got to last my life! [Laughter] I'm sorry I'm so useless. [All laughing]

TEM: What year did you start writing for the Oregonian?

FE: You guys always want to know what year. What year did the world get created? [Laughter]

JF: Yeah, no, I just read that it was '84. 08-25-84.

FE: Yeah. Well I wrote that book in about '69, '70. The Treatise on Lager Beer. And um, well, you know, didn't take long for people to start brewing. But not very many of them. But as more of them brewed, the beer got better, not my fault, and then it just went on like that. It was kind of a fun thing. The McMenamins, they were having entirely too much fun, too.

TH: [Laughter] I know! Yeah. I think fun might have been ahead of quality for a while.

JF: Mm-hmm. [Laughter]

FE: [Laughter] They were making malt extract beer there for quite some time. And it wasn't that bad!

JF: Yeah. Wasn't John Harris the first to make Hammerhead with all malt? Hammerhead?

TH: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

FE: Yeah. It's certainly an interesting thing. And it has made beer a lot more interesting than it used to be.

JF: Well, I was writing something about the Oregon Brewer's Festival, and I was thinking, "Well, imagine 30 years ago, having a beer festival!" I mean, beer was a commodity. I mean, sure, we'll have a beer festival right after the [Unintelligible 00: 47:35]. [All laughing]

FE: One of those envelopes has - Tim, would you hand me the pile of...

TH: Photos?

FE: Somewhere there. In that... One of the first...

JF: Are you going to scan those?

TH: Sure!

JF: Yeah. That'd be cool. [Unintelligible 00:47:59].

TH: Oh yeah! Maybe we could do that.

FE: Hillsdale pub. What am I looking for here now?

TH: I think the ones of Hillsdale are the first brew, actually.

JF: Like that one. Yeah.

TH: Yeah.

TEM: So you're a photographer too?

FE: Yeah, well, yeah. Sometimes my ground job in the Marine Corps was teaching swimming, and other times it was working in photography.

TH: In the Marine Corps?

FE: Yeah.

TH: Huh!

FE: Well, when you're a flight - you don't fly all the time, particularly if you're a radio operator. My favorite story on that one, though, was: We were flying from - I missed my 36th birthday, from Hawaii to uh... Anyways, we crossed the international date line before we got to May 10th, [All laughing] so I didn't have a birthday that year. And then went to Japan - later that year, went to Japan to just go to Ja- well, we flew there! We were an airline that worked for the Navy, across the Pacific, and worked for the Marine Corps into Korea! I mean, that's what we did! And it was fun, war is only bad if you're getting shot at! And we weren't really getting shot at! And I got to wander all over Okinawa... [Laughter]

TH: So were you teaching photography and... What was the other thing?

TEM: Swimming.

TH: Swimming, to other servicemen?

FE: Not the photography part of it, but the swimming.

TH: Who were you teaching photography to?

FE: I wan't teaching photography.

TH: Oh.

FE: No, that was after the war, I was photographing children or something, and they'd pay you so much. One of my friends dragged me into that. And uh, I didn't know any better. There's days that I don't even know any better when I know any better... What were we looking for here, John?

JF: Um, were you [Unintelligible 00:50:12] Hillsdale Pub photos?

FE: Could be. I don't know.

JF: And those are all Hillsdale. That's all Mike and...

FE: Yeah, I want to make sure that the Widmers get theirs. Anybody here gonna see anybody from Widmer? I thought we were having a group thing here! Someone didn't brief me too thoroughly. Won't mention any names! [All laughing]

TH: [Laughter] That would be a surprise party, but...

JF: Or maybe someone did brief you and you just forgot.

FE: There's that! [All laughing] Always that. And once you start remembering, then you're stuck, You've got to do it the rest of your life. And pretty soon, there's no room for more stuff! [All laughing]

TH: Yeah! You've got to let it go!

FE: "Alas, poor Urich, I knew him Horacio. [Unintelligible Shakespeare 00:51:08] 'Tis east! And Juliet is the Sun. Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon! Who is already sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid, are far more fair than she." [All laughing] Now that, I didn't read. I flew with another radio operator, and he was trying to memorize stuff so he could build up his brain cells, [all laughing] and he read out loud, and all he did was build up my brain cells. I'm serious! I've got big chunks of Shakespeare in my head.

TEM: That's great.

FE: And no knowledge of it. [Laughter] I don't know that I've ever actually read it. "To be or not to be." [Laughter] I'm having too much fun.

TEM: It gets lodged in there.

FE: Yeah. right.

TH: I read, in one of those articles from the Fifties, when you were teaching swimming up in Seattle, the Y, that you were talking about that you taught a number of, probably, teenage swimmers who went on to be champions in their realm!

FE: Yeah. Also, I was one of the few people who ever worked with divers.

TH: Oh, is that right?

FE: Yeah, and I could barely dive myself. Nobody ever asked me to demonstrate the [all laughing] forward one-and-a-half with a full twist, so I never bothered to demonstrate a forward one-and-a-half with a full twist! [Laughter]

TH: Did you swim a lot as a kid? Or did you learn in the service?

FE: Uh, no, in the service, I had a second-class Navy teaching thing. Again, it's, you know, a ground job.

TH: Yeah

FE: And uh, you don't know when you're going to be doing that. But it would - the fun thing was, we'd get new recruits, you know, for the aviation thing, and we'd march 'em all up this 10-meter, or 15-foot platform, and they had to stay there - they could jump off to get down, or stay until they decided to jump off. It was kind of kicky. [All laughing] What did we call that? You're bringing back - it'd be nice if you were bringing back memories, but all you're bringing back is non-memory. [All laughing]

TEM: We could call 'em scared, up there.

FE: Yeah. But they would finally go. And then you'd have to rescue the poor critters. [All laughing]

TEM: That's a big jump.

FE: Yeah.

TH: Did you swim a lot as a kid?

FE: Uh, no! I didn't pick it up until after the war! Well, I uh, before I went in the Marine Corps, I worked at the YMCA, I sort of - I took the teaching class, at the Everett Y, and then eventually went back there after I got out of the Marine Corps. And um, went to work for them for maybe a year or so. They had a diving board, and I had to teach diving, because somebody had to teach, and I didn't know which end you dove off a diving board. [All laughing] But I didn't let that stop me. [Laughter] I mean, once you know what you're doing, then you're really in trouble.

TEM: So jumping back ahead, or jumping back to the future, thinking about the late Seventies, early Eighties, in Portland, I would love to hear more about Chuck Corey. And what it was like to work with him, or be around him, and kind of the impact and legacy that you see that he had.

FE: Okay, when you get 88 years old, you don't always remember things the way they happened. [All laughing]

TEM: That's alright. [Laughter]

FE: Uh, what were we talking about? [Laughter]

TEM: Well I loved - I was reading through some of your The Amateur Brewers,

FE: My babblings. Okay.

TEM: Yeah. And there were announcements, or little blurbs about Cartwright Brewing.

FE: Oh Cartwright - okay, that was the first brewery here. Cartwright was a winemaker. And a pretty good one. And he didn't want a - well, I don't know what made him go into beer brewing, but he was so weird with it that he just screwed himself over there. Yeah. And he made good wine, but his beer was - he was charging a buck a bottle, at a time when a buck a bottle would have been about five bucks a bottle now. He was charging, you know, that's an incredible amount of money. And uh, it's just one of those combination things that you just can't do anything about. Not that I tried. [All laughing]

JF: Did you consult with him? Did you uh...

FE: Oh yeah! Charles Cart - I went there quite regularly!

JF: Yeah, that's what I thought.

FE: They have pictures of him.

JF: Yeah.

FE: Could be some of me somewhere. [Laughter] But uh, Charles was a winemaker, a good one! Made good wine. But he was trying to sell a beer that nobody wanted. And that really didn't go over very well with anybody, so he was a complete failure. By the time they caught up with him with the state, he owed taxes and stuff, they took the brewery, they took everything for his back taxes. So, they kind of screwed him over on that one.

JF: Yeah.

TH: Seems like he was ahead of his time in some ways.

FE: Yeah, he was.

TH: It seemed like the quality wasn't there, but I mean, he was bottling his own stuff, getting it in the market, right?

FE: Yeah.

TH: From the store?

FE: Yeah. He was trying to think his way through, but his brain wasn't functioning that well, I don't think. Not as bad as mine is now, but... [Laughter]

TEM: Was his place busy? Like, did people come? Was it exciting?

FE: Yeah! Yeah. Well, no. He - I don't think he - he wasn't running a brew pub.

TH: Yeah, he couldn't.

FE: No, you couldn't.

TH: I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, you couldn't!

FE: No, he just was running a brewery.

TH: Did he have a tap room? Could you have a tap - you could have a tap -

FE: No, well... You could come in and sponge a beer sample, but... [All laughing]

JF: Yeah. But I've never heard that that was part of -

FE: No, it wasn't. And he was, you know, a nice fellow, did great wine, but his beer didn't even come to the edge of that. Which is too bad. But anyway, he was the first brewer. But the beer was kind of pathetic. And uh, when you finally got it, it was even more pathetic.

TEM: Do we want to take a break?

JF: I'm good.

TH: Yeah, I'm fine for now.

[Drink ordering]

TEM: We recorded that. For posterity. [All laughing]

FE: You're pickin' on me, I think!

TEM: [Laughter] I'm not at all! It's gonna be the best oral history intermission ever.

FE: And who are you writing for?

TEM: I work at the library. OSU library.

FE: Oh, okay.

TEM: So we're recording this, and then we'll put it in the archive there. So then, people who want to write can come and write.

FE: Yeah.

TEM: So, following Cartwright, there was the growth of the Oregon Brew Crew...

FE: Yeah. And then up at the north end of wherever it was, the... There's a small brewery...

TH: In Portland?

FE: No, it was North of Portland.

TH: Oh, Pyramid, right?

FE: No... Well, it might have been Pyramid. I don't know. Ask John when he comes back.

TH: It was called something else, but it was - they made Pyramid beer. Isn't that right? Or -

FE: No, there's two different breweries on that one. Anyway, it was just one of those -

TH: Heart? Heart Brewing?

FE: Heart? Yeah, but this wasn't that either.

TH: Oh.

FE: John would remember.

TEM: I'll put a placeholder.

TH: In Washington, you mean? Or...

FE: Yeah, well, it is in Washington. It's still there! Oh... They're the ones that made the strange beer, the banana beer.

TH: Oh. Red Hook.

FE: Red Hook. Yeah, Red Hook. Okay. Yeah. Red Hook was one of the earlier ones. And uh... I was having entirely too much fun. [Tiah laughs] Which is just as well. [Tiah laughs] I might even be better off when I'm having fun. [beer arives] Yes, you've done in my beer ration for the week. [All laughing] Nice beer. I have to tell you about India Pale Ales. First of all, India Pale Ale didn't exist, but what they had was uh, brown beer. What did they call the beer, John?

JF: Uh, just the regular?

FE: Dark beer, yeah.

JF: Uh, Porter?

FE: Yeah, Porter. That was the standard beer at the end of the 18th century. And those people were just doing what they did - it was fascinating - what they did was, they had a... Where were we? You have to forgive me for not having memory. I'm lucky I remember I was born! I don't remember that either come to [think about it]. [All laughing] I just suddenly appeared one day. "Who's this freak in the mirror there? What's he doing in my bedroom?"

JF: I mean, those beers wouldn't stand up to the trip, right? I mean, wouldn't Brown Ales and Porters...

FE: No, they wouldn't go. The beer was brewed in England, a cold country, and it was a good country for brewing beer. But then, when you went anywhere with it, if you heated it up, then it was just too much trouble, and it ruined the beer! And also, the beer was fairly weak in alcohol. What they did was, they made strong beer, and then they made - put a lot of hops in to keep all the little buggies out. And so, they ended up with a strong, hoppy beer! And then, they had to ship it across two equators, and another continent down there, and uh, finally, when it got to India, there it was! And it was - for the troops - anybody here been in the military?

TEM: No.

FE: Well let me tell you this: The officers get everything, and that's what they - they were the ones that got this really good beer! In India! They shipped it across the equator, and down around the Cape of Good Hope, cold, back, it gets warm, you have this kind of thing, and it really did stuff for the beer that wouldn't get done any other way! And that was kind of fun. That was kind of a fun thing. And then, one boatload of that stuff got sunk in the English Channel, and some idiot swam down and brought back a case of it. And it was still good. And they had never tasted a beer that was darker than the light ones, and they had never tasted a beer that was heavier than the light ones, and they never tasted a beer that had that many hops either! [All laughing] So, [Laughter] that's where it gets - and this guy brought it up, you know, a couple cases of it... Well maybe the whole shipload, I don't know.

TEM: [Laughter] [Unintelligible 01:04:27]

FE: But the people - when the people got to taste it, they thought, "This is good beer!" Now, they didn't have what we call uh, hop - we call - what kind of beer are we talking about?

JF: IPAs.

FE: Well, what we call IPAs, they didn't have that then. They just had beer that was a little hoppier. They put more hops in, right? But not the kind of hops that we put - we put a hundred IBU's in a beer now, and not think anything of it. These people put 25 IBU's, and they were way overboard on that one. And uh, but, that tasted good. [All laughing] It was fascinating, 'cause the thing is, there they are, and there we were, and there was the World, and well, and it was still round! [All laughing]

TEM: Well I will not ask you a date question, but...

FE: You can try...

TEM: [Laughter] Well I can throw a date in there. Um, but I do want to know about the - you talking about hops reminded me about the relationship now that craft brewers have with um, local ingredients. We hear a lot about local ingredients, we hear a lot from hop growers. Um...

FE: Well, let me give you some purview here.

TEM: Yeah.

FE: In the earlier times, the good hops were grown down in California, and places like that. But they found out that good hops also grew up in this part of the world, in Washington. And there was always this group of people up there, who wanted to brew - you know, when they were selling hops, they grew hops for the Coors/Bud/Millers mob, and that hop, Hammerhead I think it is, I'm not - I'm trying to remember what the name of the hop...

JF: [Unintelligible 01:06:26] up there?

FE: Yeah, and it was really strong hops. And uh, they were - I'm trying to remember that. But the funny part was that when you got through that, the hop, they were growing all the nation's hops, because the other parts of the country quit growing hops!

JF: Right.

FE: And so then, our hop growers, however, didn't have a chance to get at that mob. What they were doing, they were growing hops for this kind of beer! It's a different kind of hop than just about any beer you want to think of, that's grown here in Oregon, and that's fascinating for them. But, it's not easy for them to get going on that.

JF: Right. Right. 'Cause they had um, they just recently, the people are plowing under fields of Willammettes, right?

FE: Yeah. Yeah.

JF: When, what? Uh, the big guys went to uh, what? [Unintelligible 01:07:33] hop?

FE: Yeah.

JF: And all that. [Unintelligible 01:07:38]

FE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so, but we are growing the weird hops that all those brewers that used weird hops want! So, we've picked up on that. We've got a monopoly on that. Or not a total monopoly.

JF: Thanks to OSU, [Unintelligible 01:07:53].

FE: Yeah, exactly. It's fascinating, the whole thing.

TEM: Do you think that having a hop-growing region here, growing weird hops, do you think that that - that there was as connection then? With early craft brewing here? Or this sort of strong explosion that we have now? I mean, is there...

FE: Run that by me again, slower. Slower.

TEM: Well, I'm trying to think about whether there's a link between being able to grow ingredients down the road, and then the increase - and the sheer number of breweries that are in Portland, or in Oregon? Do you think there's a link there with local ingredients, and...

FE: There's a good link in the hop department, anyway. But I don't... We just got that many people interested in beer! You know. I could take a little teensy weensy bit of credit for that, but...

JF: Yeah.

TH: Yes.

FE: Be sure and save the...

JF: Yeah. Absolutely.

TH: That's a good question, too, along the same lines, is, you know, supplies in general for brewing, and home brewers, and... I mean, Steinbart's had been around forever.

FE: Yeah. Yeah. But they weren't called Steinbart's. I can't remember - well, maybe they were.

TH: But didn't they go back to... Once Prohibition lifted or something? I thought it was really old.

FE: Yeah, well, they sold it by the can and stuff.

TH: Yeah. Um, but I wonder, I've never asked this question of Mike and Brian either, but, where did they get their supplies when they first started brewing? These first microbrewers? You know, Chuck Corey, and the Widmers, and the [Unintelligible 01:09:39], and...?

FE: Well, uh...

TH: Same place that Blitz did? Or...

FE: Yeah, yeah. Same kind of...

TH: But their [Unintelligible 01:09:45] was so much smaller!

FE: Well it's the way you use it, and the way you manage it that makes the difference.

TH: Yeah.

JF: I remember the Widmers talking about, they would band together so they could buy a -

TH: Yeah, that makes sense.

JF: - half truckload of malt instead of, you know, bags.

FE: Yeah. Well it wasn't easy to start a brewery in those days. It was fun, but it wasn't easy. But we used to have these meetings over at the place - the McMenamin place I was talking about.

TH: Oh. I think you're talking about the uh, what did they call - the Stockyard Cafe?

FE: Mm, that doesn't seem familiar.

JF: Is it the one out by the Expo Center?

TH: You said "airport" earlier.

FE: Near the airport.

TH: I can't think of any.

FE: Anyway, it was one of those things, just... first thing, you know, people started liking it! Not only that, but, the Bud/Coors/Millers mob, it's tedious. I remember coming at the end of the war, you know, after drinking nothing but Bud/Millers, period - no ifs, ands, or buts about it, and suddenly, the opportunity presents itself to put a little bit of something different in it. So then, they were making some other, more interesting beers. And it kind of worked out. But it was not one of those things that anybody planned. And it certainly wasn't my fault. [All laughing] I just kicked 'em as they went along. [Tim laughs]

TEM: Yeah, not to say that it's your fault, or your kicking, but if you could talk - I'm interested, then, in - you're known, of course, for your beer writing, as well as lots of other things. So, can you talk about the role that - I don't know if it would be called "marketing" or "promotion" - you had to get people to actually know about these beers.

FE: That's true.

TEM: What did you see your role was in that?

FE: Uh, I don't think I ever considered what my role was! Not a thought that... It isn't something that would bother me, or would have bothered me. I just... You know, put it in front of me and I drink it.

TEM: And then you wrote about it.

FE: Yeah. I'm famous for that, you know. WWFD, "What Would Fred Drink?" [All laughing] The beer in his hand! And that's where I'm at! I've always been there! [Laughter]

TEM: Was there a moment, though, where you considered the impact that you would have? Is there a time - do you now...

FE: Well, yeah, I think my Treatise was good 'cause I told everybody on the planet how to make decent beer in their home. Anybody that was interested could use that as a guide. I think. I don't know. I never tried to use it as a guide. [Laughter] But do you understand what I'm saying?

TEM: Yeah.

FE: It puts the thing out there where anybody who wants to can use it, and make their own beer. And that's what I did. I put the information out there for everybody. Michael Jackson called it a treatise on lager beer. No, he didn't - the manager of the store that published it, that I had been teaching beermaking in, he called it a Treatise. My treatise. I said, "Oh..." [All laughing] "Treatise? Treatise? Treatise?"

TEM: I suppose you could say that writing for the Oregonian had that same effect, that you were putting the information out there for people.

FE: Yes, I was trying to do that. But you can't just put a beer recipe out there. It didn't work like that. But it was nice to promote - I mean, these people were all doing good things, the beer was good, they were working at it, and that was the whole idea, and it was growing in Portland, that's one of the - this is one of the new - you know, anybody - you want to brew beer? Learn how to get it done out of my book, and you can sit down and brew some beer! And if you like it, then you can also sell it! I mean, it's not, you know... I think that's the black community that's missing the point there. Although Garrett Oliver, who's a black brewer in The Bronx, is very good.

JF: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

FE: Yeah. He's a character, too. [Laughter]

TH: So, and you traveled around the country, especially after your book came out.

FE: Yeah.

TH: Why was Portland - or why was the Pacific Northwest ahead of the curve? I mean... Where was - Charlie was from the Denver area?

FE: Yeah. Because my book came out here! Actually, I do give myself credit for that. But it wasn't that I planned it that way. If I knew what I was doing. [All laughing]

TH: I mean, there it is. That was the starting point for a lot of people! I mean, it gave 'em the idea, and it gave 'em the tools to do it.

FE: Yeah. Yeah.

TH: Did you ever teach in your classes, anyone who went on to be brewers that we would know?

FE: I probably did, but I wasn't paying attention. [Laughter]

TH: [Laughter] I bet you did!

FE: But it's a fun thing to do. You actually could sit at home now and brew beer and sell it in your cellar, or your living room, or whatever. And the state will put up with it. That's another thing. When everybody went down to Salem, and demanded that they allow live ferments inside the bottle, that's what really made it work. Otherwise, it wouldn't have worked at all. You have to have - it has to work in the bottle. So...

JF: Can't be pasteurized?

FE: Yeah.

JF: Yeah.

TH: That reminds me of another question, I wonder if you remember, with the Brewpub Bill in 1985, the rider on that bill allowed for Coors to come into Oregon. And did that have much of an impact?

FE: Because Coors was fermented in the bottle.

TH: Right!

FE: They needed to have a law to get Coors in. And when we finally got it in, it tasted like Olympia! And we finally figured out that the owner of Olympia and the owner of Coors went to school together, wherever it was they learned how to brew beer: [sounds like "Germany!" 01:16:42] That's an accomplishment.

TEM: Huh!

TH: Did Coors immediately take a slice of the beer sales in Oregon?

FE: I suppose they did, but it tasted just like Olympia. First thing I did was grab a Coors, and... "Ehhhhh..... More of the same, only worse." [Laughter] Well, it wasn't worse, but...

TH: Maybe it drove more people to try [unintelligible, 01:17:09] beers.

FE: Yeah, it might have! Yeah. I don't know what got it so popular in Oregon. But it's popular across the country!

JF: Now, but... Then...

FE: Well it wasn't then.

TH: You're talking about craft beer or Coors?

FE: Yeah, Craft beer. Yeah. Well it's popular - A few homebrewers have changed the entire nature of the world brewing industry.

All: Mm-hmm.

FE: We have! And we should grab some credit for that. That is what we did. We got good beer brewing across the country. Across the world. And they were selling it. The Japanese craft beer is very good.

TH: Yeah?

FE: Uh, Southeast Asian craft beer? Very good. North Chinese craft - well, no, the Chinese are still sticking to the... But anyway, it's just not - just one of those things.

JF: Mm-hmm.

TH: How did things develop in Denver? I mean, was that anywhere near what was going on in Portland?

FE: Well they were ahead of us. Actually, our brewers here could look over there and say, "[Unintelligible 01:18:20]?" And it's just that we did it more thoroughly than they did. But you cannot ignore Charlie Papazian. He put this together. I would have never - would have been a failure, had I been running it. But I would have had fun. [All laughing]

TH: No doubt.

JF: Yeah.

TH: So Denver had - or Colorado had early craft brewing? Earlier than Oregon?

FE: Oh, I think so, yeah.

TH: [Unintelligible 01:18:52].

FE: There's a little village on the outside of Denver there, I can't think of the name of it. Boulder. Boulder. Boulder has a good brewing company.

JF: Mm-hmm. Well that's where, actually, the great American Beer Festival started. I mean, we were still...

FE: Yeah. Somewhere here, John, I think somewhere in these pictures, I have the 19... Whatever the beer festival - which is coming up, isn't it?

JF: Um, the Denver festival?

FE: Ours.

JF: Ours starts tomorrow. Yeah.

FE: Yeah.

JF: Yeah. From the labels, those are all McMenamins-specific.

FE: Yeah. I guess I didn't bring the one. I'm surprised.

TH: But these were - that was Widmer?

JF: Yeah. I think that was Widmer, yeah.

FE: Uh, you gonna give it to 'em?

JF: Um, let's see. Yeah, I'll see Curt or Rob tonight. I can do that.

FE: Okay. There's the Hillsdale, this is the McMenamins.

TH: Yeah, I'll get that, show it to 'em.

FE: Hillsdale. Yeah, and we put together a brewpub out there! It was kind of fun! [Tiah laughs] Well, it is!

TEM: Yeah! No, it is!

FE: When you're doing some stupid thing that's different, and it's successful, it's more than fun, it's...

TH: Well, you know, that's how you wrote! And you made it sound exciting and fun, when you're talking about new upstart brew-

FE: [Laughter] You're gonna blame this on me?

TH: Yes!

FE: [Laughter] Anyway...

TEM: What about California? What was...

FE: It's a state, it's south of Oregon, [Tiah laughs] and west of uh... Or is it east? [Tiah laughs] I'm giving you a hard time, aren't I?

TEM: So, California. You had a chance to go down there, early days as well?

FE: Yeah. Oh, I've got good stuff on - Well see, the first brewer of this kind of beer, you might say, is the Steam Beer Brewing Company down there.

TH: Yeah!

JF: Yeah. I'm wondering - is that Anchor?

FE: It could easily be, John, I don't -

JF: Yeah, 'cause there's the cold ship, and...

FE: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, I didn't label these, I just put them in a bag, and stashed them away, and I thought, "I gotta get rid of these, because one of these -" well, you know, I'm 88 years old, I can't live forever. Another two weeks, maybe, but... [Laughter]

JF: Yeah, but I bet these are Anchor. But you were saying, I'm sorry, I interrupted you.

FE: What did I say that was worth interrupting? [Laughter]

TH: Going to California early on.

FE: Oh, yeah. Um, so I went down there, because I knew they were making strange beer! Nobody was making beer of that category.

TH: Is this Anchor?

FE: Yeah. And uh, I got to know them down there. And I got to know Fritz, and um, I did a lot of writing about them. And it was fun! And they were nice people. They're still nice people.

JF: Yeah.

FE: If it ain't fun, I don't do it. Hardly. [Laughter]

TH: Were your articles syndicated? Would they be picked up and reprinted across the country?

FE: Uh... I don't think so.

TH: No?

FE: No, nobody was interested.

TH: Really?

FE: Yeah. My little publication was fun... I had a good time with it, and I think I maybe had 80 or 90 subscribers, and it was fun! I was having fun, they were having fun, and actually some of them were paying attention! Which is...

TH: So, do you remember how it happened, that you started - I mean, it makes sense, but, you started writing the column first in Seattle, at the time. I guess just the Times. But were you writing for other places up there?

FE: No. 'Cause I'm, you know, I was from Seattle, I know people up there.

TH: So you were involved in that scene, the early brewing scene.

FE: Yeah, to that extent, yeah.

TH: Yeah.

FE: But, you know, I had been to Charlie Papazian's little things over in Denver, and he was good! I mean, you want to blame somebody on all this, Charlie's the one to go for. I just was going along for the ride.

TEM: Were the brewers in the Eighties to late Eighties, were they talking about ingredients? Were they thinking about...

FE: I don't think they were thinking about all these strange ingredients that have appeared in beers since then. But it's the procedures and the system that made it possible to do that, and that's where I get the credit, I guess.

TEM: Yeah. Would you call yourself a traditionalist for beer?

FE: No. No, that's the first thing I learned in the Marine Corps, was, wherever you go, the beer's gonna be exactly the same. Bud, yeah, same. Coors, yeah, same. Millers, yeah, same. Whatever. They didn't [care]. They were all making the same beer. And uh, I used to - I mean, I'd enjoy the beer, always have, [all laughing] but, [laughter] they would make a beer and... What was it good for? Everybody else was making the same beer! Coors, Bud, Miller's, all of 'em. And that was during the war because they didn't have any competition. You were lucky to find a beer, nevermind the beer you were looking for. The states were just recovering from Prohibition, and the services were trying to make Prohibition rational. Who knows what they were doing. Anyway...

TEM: How do you feel about all of the crazy ingredients that go into beer now?

FE: Oh, they're great! [All laughing] You never know what you're gonna get. And there's - in Oregon, in Portland here, there must be something like 500 kinds of beer floating around. We've got 100 breweries, don't we?

TH: Wow.

JF: 74, yeah, 75.

FE: Okay. And they each of 'em brewing about... what? 5 or 10 different kinds? Yeah. I mean, they're not all that different, but they're not all that the same!

TEM: Right. There's no more than... half of 'em are Imperial IPA's. Right?

FE: Yeah. [All laughing] I'm not supposed to drink too much. And I usually don't allow myself to drink before 4 o'clock. However, it is not quite 4 o'clock yet. [All laughing]

TEM: And you have a ride home. [Laughter]

FE: And I have a ride home. Yes. Thank you.

TH: Didn't you have a newsletter called "Listen To Your Beer"?

FE: Yes.

TH: What time period was that? I mean, was that early on?

FE: Early before the other one that you guys -

JF: The Amateur Brewer?

FE: Yeah, before the Amateur -

TH: Oh, it was before that?

FE: Yeah. Yeah. Well, my mother used to shout at me, you know, "Listen to your mother!" [All laughing]

TH: [Unintelligible 00:27:17] "Listen to your beer".

TEM: The pictures in that are great, 'cause they actually have people [laughter] with their ears down to their beer.

TH: [Laughter] So you've seen some of those?

TEM: They have it at Multnomah County Library! An almost complete collection, I discovered last weekend.

FE: Really?

TEM: Yeah!

FE: I did used to send all my stuff over there.

TEM: So it's because you either brewed with, or knew the librarian of Multnomah County Library?

FE: Yeah. Well, yeah, my partner Jim was the head of the... What department was he head of?

TEM: Social Science? Is that right?

FE: Something like that, yeah.

TH: At the library?

FE: Yeah.

TH: Oh, I didn't know that!

FE: Yeah.

TEM: No, it's great! I had a great time. So, what you wrote many years ago, it was very fun to read.

FE: Well thank you.

TEM: And there was the recipe side, but just the news, what was going on -

TH: And what was going on? This is like mid-Seventies?

TEM: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a dispute that you - well, not dispute. That's too big of a word. Somebody that you knew in Berkeley who kept trying to say that homebrewing was legal, and you either... You called, or wrote to the feds, to see if it was actually legal, and then you wrote, "No, it's not." Leo? Leon? What was his...

FE: I don't remember. However, I probably did that. [Laughter]

TEM: Yeah, it was somebody, I can't -

FE: Whatever I'm accused of, I probably did. [Laughter]

TH: Didn't Jimmy Carter actually become -

FE: Yeah, 1979, if I'm not mistaken.

TEM: But this was, yeah, like '77.

TH: Oh.

TEM: So there's... Yeah, there was information about Cartwright Brewing, beer education, that was also included. Classifieds were included... Uh... Trying to think of other things. Just articles that - people started submitting articles too. Um... But then you did a short run of the newsletter on saké too.

FE: Mm-hmm! Yeah. Um, that... Saké is a beer. I mean, it's made only with grain. Maybe it doesn't have bubbles, but it's a beer! Anyway, isn't this a nice shirt? [All laughing] And it's a nice - and it tastes good! Every day, I have one or two small glasses of saké. And I'm not sure I'm supposed to have any alcolhol at all, but I'm not worried about that! [All laughing]

JF: Yeah, what do they know.

FE: Hold my breath 'til I die. About 3 minutes, I think. If that long. [All laughing] No, I'm having too much fun to... do whatever it is I do.

TEM: When you think back, what were the... What are the stories - you've told us lots of stories, but what are some of your favorite stories that stick out in your head from what we now would call early craft brewing?

FE: Yeah. Mm... Well, if Widmer's going around with their truckload of beer and trying to get rid of it by the keg, [laughter] that was an accomplishment. Well, you know, nobody knew what they were drinking; all they knew was, it tasted good! And uh, not everybody says that. I can talk to ten people that tell me it's lousy beer. But uh, it's not my favorite. I mean, it's not my idea. We make good beer here! And we are the heart of the world brewing right now. But the Japanese also do a good job. The Asians do a good job. The Chinese will do, if they aren't already, doing a good job. The whole world brewing industry is being screwed over by a bunch of homebrewers. I like that. [All laughing]

TH: It was kind of a revolution, wasn't it?

FE: Yeah! It was! And uh, yeah. It was.

TH: A coup.

FE: Yeah, actually, you know, the Bud/Coors/Miller mob doesn't know what to do!

TH: Yeah.

FE: They're trying to make some of these beers, but they're never going to get 'em! You know, you have to make 'em in small batches, and small bottles, and small towns, and big towns, and that's what this is! And they ain't gonna get it! We got it.

JF: Mm-hmm.

TH: Yeah, there's a great quote, that reminds me of: Don Younger saying, "Really, the difference that makes all the difference is, you know who brews your beer. You know them."

FE: Mm-hmm. If you don't, you can get to know them.

TH: Yeah.

FE: Or even people like John, whose pen won't write unless he puts his hand on it. [All laughing]

JF: Workin' on it.

FE: Now, you gave me all these back. What is on here?

JF: Well, no, those are...

TH: I'll -

JF: Yeah, take those.

FE: Okay. Just make sure the McMenamins get 'em, if you will.

TH: Yes. I will. And I'll get 'em back to you, I will copy -

FE: I don't want 'em back.

TH: You don't want 'em back?

FE: Well... I know where I can get 'em if I need 'em. I'm sure you won't destroy 'em.

TH: Well, I'm not going to keep 'em, but I will copy 'em.

FE: Well, you can give 'em back if you want. Yeah. Hillsdale.

TH: Yeah, that's great stuff. That goes all the way back to the beginning.

FE: It does, doesn't it? Oh, if only me poor dear mother could see me now. The depths I've sunk meself to! The people I've associated meself with!

TH: Your German mother. [Laughter]

FE: [Laughter] My Irish mother wouldn't recognize me for... whatever. Am I giving these back to you?

TH: Sure, I'd love to take 'em and copy 'em.

FE: And you can give 'em to Mike and...

TH: Yes. They'll have fun with those.

JF: And those, I'm pretty sure, are Anchor. So... I'm not going to give 'em to the Widmers.

FE: Oh okay. Yeah.

JF: But I will - I'll scan - and these are a couple extras.

FE: Okay. I didn't know who did these, so I'll take your word for it.

JF: Yeah. Yeah, I'll scan these, and send 'em down to Mark.

FE: There's negatives in there somewhere, in the same envelope.

TH: They still have the same plant?

JF: No, no, this was the plant downtown that had, apparently it had one [unintelligible 01:34:32]...

TH: Is that right? [Laughter]

JF: Yeah.

FE: What are we talking about here?

TH: Anchor Steam.

FE: Anchor.

JF: The old Anchor.

FE: Oh, I loved that. Some great beer. First time I tasted Anchor was in a pub on the side there somewhere, and it actually tasted good! [Tim laughs] You know, after drinking years of Coors, Bud, and Millers - well, skip Coors; didn't get to Coors 'til later. [Laughter]

TH: Now Fitz started that in the Sixties, right?

JF: Yeah.

TH: Early, mid-Sixties?

JF: Uh, it was like, yeah, it was like '67.

FE: The owner of Coors and the owner of Olympia went to school together, and the beer tasted as though it were made by the same people.

JF: Mm-hmm.

FE: You might not have tried 'em side-by-side in those days, but I did.

JF: Yeah. But Anchor, Anchor was - Fritz Maytag [Sp? 01:35:22] took over Anchor, '67.

FE: Mm-hmm. Fritz is a great guy. I love him.

JF: Yeah. I was down at the - two years ago, at the tasting room, and they have this great poster of Janis Joplin, and her brother, all at the tasting room.

FE: Is that the one the lost her um... When she was singing the national anthem?

JF: No.

TH: No. [All laughing]

FE: No, Janis Joplin, that's... [Laughter] She's still getting blamed for that, you know! Ruined the whole thing! [All laughing]

TH: Shame on her. [All laughing] Uh, so yeah, I'd forgotten that. Anchor had been around for a while, and then Fritz took it over, right?

JF: Right. Anchor was a failing brewery.

FE: Yeah.

TH: But it was still operating?

JF: It was still operating, but...

FE: But he made a different beer! Not the same beer!

TH: Is that right?

FE: And that's what did it, people were sick of - I mean, beer is just something, it's like water. You know, this water has to have character, that water has this character... Beer has its own character. And these people had a chance to sample some possibilities, other than the Bud/Coors/Millers mob. So actually, we have changed, we have changed world brewing in just a few homebrewers. We're nice people. Well, sort of nice people. Mostly nice.

JF: What'd we go to - like 50 breweries in the country? Um...

TH: Oh yeah! Right.

JF: To... last count was like 3700.

FE: Well, it seems to me, in the 1990's, or whenever this was, we had 90 breweries, and they were expected to be down to uh...

JF: Yeah, they were expected to be down to what? 8?

FE: Yeah, something like that.

TH: 8?

JF: Yeah. 'Cause the sensible thing was...

TH: Yeah, just consolidate, which was what was happening.

FE: And it didn't matter, you know, you could pick Coors, okay, and it tasted the same as Millers, the same as Bud, and what we've done is, we've put taste back in beer! Maybe not everybody likes all of those tastes, but...

TH: So that's something we haven't really talked about, that I think is important. Uh, is, before there was the craft brewing, I mean, there were homebrewers, but, it was important for people to get a taste of good beer and there was that period before craft brewing started that imports and other beers - I mean, was Anchor available up here to buy?

JF: Yeah.

FE: Um, yeah, you could...

JF: You could get it, I remember...

TH: Draft or bottle?

JF: Bottle.

FE: It was hard - you didn't find it in every...

JF: [Unintelligible 01:38:20].

TH: So, I mean, places like Horse Brass that had started bringing in a million imports, and draft...

FE: John, what got you interested in beer? The taste? [Laughter]

JF: Um... No, I started writing it because uh...

FE: Nobody else would.

JF: That's right! Yeah. Yeah. We needed to write about craft beer, and everybody in the room at the meeting was a wine-drinker or a cocktail-drinker, you know.

FE: Or a Bud/Coors/Miller drinker.

JF: No, there weren't any of those. I was the only beer drinker in the room. [Laughter]

FE: Oh. You rescued us.

JF: [Laughter] Well, I had carried on the tradition. [Laughter]

TH: So was there a void? I didn't really know that. You had stopped writing?

JF: Yeah, he had stopped writing...

FE: Yeah, I hadn't written for a while.

JF: Yeah. You hadn't written for the O for a while.

FE: Yeah.

JF: And then, a guy named Mike Francis, a good business reporter. But he was doing mainly - he was doing business stories. He wasn't doing beer culture.

FE: Yeah.

JF: He was the one who covered when Gambrinas bought, you know, Bridgeport, uh... Then the Widmers.

TH: Anheuser Busch?

JF: Yeah. He covered those stories. And I kind of came in and started writing about the culture thereof.

FE: Well we were all nice people 'til we met our parents! [All laughing] So you're enjoying writing about beer, aren't you, John?

JF: Um, yeah. I mean, yeah. Such great people.

FE: Better than writing about... whatever else floats around out there. No, beer is really, it's comfortable, and it's usually not alcoholic enough to screw your day up. And uh, I try not to - these days, if I drink, I don't drive. If I can manage that. And uh, that's one of those things that, while I'm old enough, you know, if I come to a stop at a stoplight, and there's an accident a quarter of a mile away, the cops are gonna say, "Wait wait wait, where is he? There he is over there!" [All laughing]

TH: But that's - since you're both here, that's an interesting comparison, to talk about writing in your day, about the first ones, and building those up, and expansion, but now, you can't even pretend to cover everything.

FE: No, that's true, yeah.

JF: Yeah.

FE: But it's fun to try, John, isn't it?

JF: Yes, it is, sometimes difficult, but...

FE: Sometimes? [Laughter]

JF: Yeah. And it's just interesting to see all the kind of generations of brewers, you know? We're certainly on to the 5th or 6th wave, you know, of... I mean, brewers who are, what? 40 years younger than me.

FE: Oh, they can't be! [Laughter]

TH: [Laughter] It's true, isn't it? [Laughter]

JF: Wonder how that happened. [Laughter]

FE: The world is still round, but it's hard to prove. If you keep going, you'll never get to the other end. You know you won't, but you'll try anyway.

JF: Yeah. [Laughter]

TH: But you'll try.

TEM: Do you think there's a change now from - in your early articles, or in things that I've read about you, you talk about taste. That you were writing about making beer, obviously, but you also were writing about the taste, and enjoying the tastes. And now, we still talk about taste, but we hear an awful lot and see an awful lot about culture, so it's not just the beer drinking, it's kind of everything that goes around it.

FE: Mm-hmm.

TEM: Is that a change? Or is it just now...

FE: I think it's just now - we're starting to get a chance to pick and choose. One of the interesting things is, I'm trying to think of the guy's name, the Cook Brewery Company.

JF: Oh, uh, Jim Cook?

FE: Yeah. Jim. Nice guy. But if you go - in the eastern half of the United States, you just about... That's the only beer you get! But although they do have a lot of variety, there's nothing - I'm not picking on them. But it's fascinating, and um, whatever.

TEM: Seems that in many ways, it's not just about drinking beer anymore, it's about beer tours...

FE: Yeah, but nobody drinks beer to get drunk anymore. We did that when we were children. Probably everybody in this room. And uh, well, yeah, that was the one thing that drove me away, I didn't enjoy the idea of being drunk. Not when I was fourteen. Well, maybe a little bit. [All laughing]

[waitress returns]

JF: I'm going to have to pull up stakes here soon anyway.

TEM: Yeah.

TH: Oh, is it 4?

JF: Yeah.

TEM: What are your parting thoughts?

FE: My parting thoughts are that we have initiated a whole new venture in the world brewery industry, and nobody gives us credit for that. You know, you're not gonna get anything out of the Bud/Coors/Miller mob. But they're the ones that are suffering! And it's kind of fun to watch. [John laughs] These are the ones you're giving back?

JF: Yeah. 'Cause those, as I say, I think those are Anchor.

FE: Oh, okay.

TH: So Fred, 30 years ago, could you imagine you'd be saying that 30 years later? I mean...

FE: No.

TH: They were behemoth breweries. How could you even -

FE: Yeah. I wouldn't have even given it a thought! You know?

TH: Cutting into their -

FE: In fact, I thought we were doomed to failure the minute we started! But I didn't care. [Laughter] Long as I had my beer. [Laughter]

TH: But it had - yeah, at that point, it was never meant to compete. It was just alternatives.

FE: Yeah. Yeah.

TH: Better alternative.

FE: Yeah. But the McMenamins were one of the leaders in this whole brewing thing. This whole small brewing. And uh, they sure deserve some credit. In fact, 1912 was the last brewpub before...

TH: 1912?

FE: Something like that. Yeah. Somewhere in my notes, I have this information. It's too bad I can't remember it. Too bad I don't know what I'm talking about!

TEM: That's why you put it in notes, then you don't have to remember it.

TH: Yeah! Exactly.

FE: Yeah, but I didn't always do that. And then when I put 'em in notes, I didn't always keep track of where I did those notes! [All laughing] I'm not a competent person. [Tim laughs]

TEM: That's where it falls apart. You've got to keep track of your notes. [Laughter]

FE: I may, in fact, be having too much fun. [Laughter] I don't think I'm having as much fun as John, though. [Laughter]

JF: I don't know... [Laughter]

FE: No, it was just one of those things. We put beer out there in the way that wine had been for several decades. And we put beer out, so that people could actually brew it at - could actually brew it if they wanted to take the trouble. And uh, I do take credit for that.

JF: Sure. Yeah. You should.

FE: Well, I'll be careful. First thing you know, I might think I'm important. I wouldn't if I were you. [Laughter]

TEM: Too late. [Laughter]

FE: Too late.

TH: Yeah, not many people have beers named after 'em, and...

JF: Right.

TH: ...festivals named after 'em, in their honor.

FE: Well, [laughter] there's that. That was interesting, you know, when they first brought out the "Fred" beer, uh, I - well, you know, everywhere I went, everybody knew me, and I'd always get a free beer. And I wanted to buy my own blankety-blank beer. And it's like, I thought, you know, "Here's a new beer, I'm gonna go, and-" I can't remember the name of the place, but it was a place I had never been in before. And uh, I thought, "Nobody knows me here, they're not gonna give me no free beer." I went in the door, and I sat down, and ordered a Belgian beer. I can't remember the name of it. The Quack. The Quack's a good beer! I ordered the Quack. And then I ordered some other. Chimay or something like that. And then, I asked them, "Do you have a beer named Fred?" And the guy said, "Oh yeah!" And he served me a glass of that too. And I thought, "I've got this down pat now! They don't know me!" But he did. [Laughter]

TH: He did? [Laughter]

FE: He said, "That one's free." [All laughing] I couldn't escape. Couldn't pay for my beer. I got free beer there. [All laughing]

TH: You shouldn't have to pay for Fred beer, you know.

FE: Well, no, I have a friend who's a writer up in Seattle who I haven't seen for years, but his favorite occupation was going from - going to a brewery and demanding free beer as a writer. And that used to just bug me because I used to think, "Why would he do that?"

JF: [Unintelligible 01:49:05]

FE: Yeah! You can always afford another beer. And if you can't, you shouldn't be drinking.

JF: That's right.

FE: I suppose.

TEM: I want to get a picture before... I'm gonna hit "Off". You ready?

FE: I am.

TEM: Okay.

[End of interview]