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The last time the beer was good WAS in the 1970s... until recently. Honestly.

Posted by John Marks on September 3, 2024 at 17:31:37

In Reply to: RE: Narragansett Mini Monitor posted by seancuster71@gmail.com on September 3, 2024 at 01:55:03:

The Narragansett Brewing Company was founded by a group of six German immigrants in 1890. In due course they built a complex including stables for the horses that delivered the beer, and sidings for the railroad freight cars that shipped out the beer.

My father, who worked for his father, catering to the lunch needs of thousands of Brewery workers from the repeal of Prohibition (which FDR did at the stroke of his pen in 1933) to circa 1962 or 1963, always said that the Unique Selling Proposition of Narragansett Beer was that it bought its water from the Providence (RI) Water Board, which had a Reservoir in Scituate, Rhode Island, with fresh water of unusual purity and freshness.

The creation of the Scituate Reservoir, which began treating water in 1926, cost $21 million in 1926 dollars. The water-treatment plant was one of the most technologically advanced of its day, and was the only one of its kind in New England.

Narragansett went through various changes of ownership. However, what killed Old Narragansett was the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. Beer is a very capital-intensive and energy-intensive business--both on the boiling side and the cooling side. IIRC, Narragansett circa 1973 had lost its deal with the Boston Red Sox, and it had been taken over by Falstaff beer. Which was from IIRC Texas, where the energy was less expensive.

Me, I was personally offended that the brewery my grandfather and father had toiled to feed was taken over by a mediocre beer company named after one of Shakespeare's frequent dirty jokes.

The trademark kicked around for a while, and I ignored it, because interlopers were selling Rolling Rock (ugh) beer in cans that said "Narragansett."

But, the current owners, while still importing foreign beer, do do some brewing in Rhode Island.

I was in downtown Providence about a dozen years ago. I was coming out of my bank, and an older guy was going into the my bank wearing a vintage Narragansett worker's denim coat. Beer is a messy business, and you can't work in a brewery without getting sprayed so much that you hang your work coat in the back hall, as my father did.

I said to him something like, "Excuse me, did you work at Narragansett?" He smiled and said "Yes."

I told him that he might have known my grandfather and my father, both known as George Marks.

His total demeanor changed. He asked, I think a bit incredulously, "Are you George Marks's son?" "One of them," I answered. He then fervently told me that he would never forget my father. Why? Because that guy's son was (back then) being rebellious and wanting to leave the Church, and the guy was boiling mad. My father brought him up short and told him to ignore it, let it pass; your job is to pray for him and to tell him that no matter what, you will always love him.

The guy seemed a bit amazed that a working-class, high-school dropout (the Depression) guy like my father would take it upon himself to... say such things.

But he told me that he decided to take my father's advice, and the son got over it, and the guy had never stopped being thankful that he had not broken off relations with his son.

I replied to him, "Yeah, that sounds like my Dad."

My father got a GED in WWII, and went to night school to get a teacher's certificate. He was one of the three co-authors of the School Desegregation Plan for Providence. That's because he believed that it was an offense against God that a political entity such as a City or Town would hand out educations of differing qualities to children, based on how much money their parents made, or, even worse, the colors of their skin.

Dad, I am always so proud of you.

john

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narragansett_Brewing_Company   (Open in New Window)

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