An evening out and a growing sense of celebration
Bill and I were talking beer. There’s just bucketsful of breweries in Asheville. Gangs of Uber riders making the rounds used to ask if I drank beer. No, I’d say, not like you guys. I savor a beer with dinner, but I wouldn’t dream of traveling hundreds of miles for the opportunity to visit a whole mess of breweries over the course of a weekend.
Nevertheless, in transit to Asheville’s South Slope where they could walk to ten breweries, I’d always instruct those riders to be sure to include Burial Beer on their itinerary, and to get there sooner than later on account of once you’ve visited six or seven breweries the beer must all be tasting pretty much the same anyway. Which they’d agree with. As often as not this suggestion would lead them to request a drop-off on Collier Street right in front of Burial.
So when Bill asked if I had a favorite brewery I didn’t hesitate for a minute. “Have you ever,” he asked, “been to the Forestry Camp?” I had not. Forestry Camp, a cluster of six buildings originally constructed as a CCC facility in the ‘30’s, housed young men working, among other things, on building the Blue Ridge Parkway. The property was purchased by Burial and has been painstakingly preserved. It opened about a year before the pandemic, re-purposed as a brewing and aging facility with a bar, a sandwich and small plate eatery, and a high-end restaurant; as well as housing Burial’s corporate offices.
“Would you like to go?” Bill asked. And I thought well sure, but when? This was Monday. Thursday morning Bill would be heading out for a long weekend; by the time he’d return, Santina and I would already have waved goodbye to Asheville and be following in the wake of a moving van headed for Rhode Island.
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“Tomorrow!” he said. And I said, “Yes, well of course, tomorrow.” And so it was that the two of us ended up at the Forestry Camp sharing stories over glasses of Shadowclock. The stories were flowing freely by the time our glasses were empty and Bill said: “How bout another round?” I said: “Well, I’m actually pretty much a one beer guy, but here we are, and you’re driving, and we could walk around for a bit afterward, and you’ve never tasted their Surf Wax IPA — so yeah.”
Then Bill told me about how he and his wife had honeymooned in Kenya — which I thought was pretty incredible. How they’d rented a miniature SUV and headed out on a diminishingly reliable road and had the misadventure of driving over a termite mound, and how that mound — hard as concrete — had badly ripped up the muffler, and how they’d noisily limped the 50 or so miles back to the car rental, and how the owner, understanding without major explanation, invited them to wait while he got the SUV patched up — and when it was once again roadworthy, sent them back out into the wilds without charge.
Bill told me about elephants encountered in a game preserve. Not seen from a distance over swaying savannah grasses, but very nearly plowed into as he rounded a corner. He told me how the big bull elephant headed for them, wasn’t charging them (no more than the car rental guy had), but was headed their way with a purpose — his trunk raised, a sign of impending mayhem. Bill slammed the SUV into reverse and floored it, hurtling backward until he’d created safety in distance. That seemed pretty heroic to me; but of course Bill was also the one who hit the termite mound. So . . . .
And that story reminded me of one from the same early ‘80’s era when Santina and I rented an ancient VW beetle in Santo Domingo only later to discover that it had no reverse gear. We became super careful about parking. But the forward-only vehicle didn’t dissuade us from journeying across the width of the island of Hispaniola to Samana on the north coast.
We left the hubbub of Santo Domingo behind us, passed the zoo and the barrios, and were soon out of sight of humanity. The road grew progressively more modest until, nearing dusk, we approached a small town sustained if not created by its gold mining industry. Here the road was so pockmarked by huge VW-eating potholes that we could proceed only at a crawl, dodging and weaving. People came out of their houses, they lined the street to see an actual automobile and to watch the strange white people picking their way through.
I told Bill I was tempted to bring some of Burial’s best with me to Rhode Island, but that that seemed backward looking; that I ought rather to be exploring the beer that Rhode Island has to offer. So I googled breweries near Warren RI and was startled to see an article from February about the town’s approval of a building permit for a brewery with a 140 seat restaurant, tentatively to be completed in July at the Tourister Mill complex — our new home. Good ness!
So Tuesday evening was a real turning point. It marked, first of all, a wonderful shedding of nearly every Covid protocol. It was a time to rejoice, to laugh from deep down in the belly, and to share stories that would have been only slightly less entertaining without the beer. It was a good night out. And a reminder that we need to continue to create our stories, not just wait for them to happen along, even though of course they will, with or without the elephants.
