A missionary and a brewery...

At the halfway point I thought I'd tell a little story about a naive rural Canadian kid and the world's largest single site brewery.

Halfway through my attempt at liberating the spiritual captives of the great state of Colorado I was transferred to Golden, just West of Denver, where the foothills turn into proper mountains. It was my home for 5 months. It has also been the home, since 1873, of Coors. And it smells like it has been there longer. We, being poor missionaries at the decision-making mercy of beings more powerful, lived in a crappy one room apartment frequented by all manner of exoskeleton-bearing vermin, and not far removed from the above mentioned massive beer factory.

So if the wind changed everyone knew it, good or bad.

I don't know if I would feel the same way about it now, but at the time it was mildly disgusting. Fermentation really is just rotting with a little magic thrown in. It felt strange to be a salesperson for what is widely known as a tee-totalling church while living in the shadow of such a singular shrine to suds. But I was also curious.

All of that factory-looking stuff in the middle is Coors, extending back into the valley and around the corner of that table top mountain.

The brewery gives tours. At that time, it gave a few every day. We decided to use some of our precious half-day off per week to check it out. My memory is a little sketchy here, but I know we had to board a bus from somewhere slightly removed from the brewery to get on the tour. After a 40 second drive we were through the gates and walking along behind a guide.

It was impressive. I knew nothing about it and asked lots of questions. This was met with widespread scowling among the others on the tour. I assumed at first that they were annoyed by my lack of knowledge. I would learn that they were annoyed by the delay my questions were causing.

Me on the right. Now you know where Waldo was from '92-'94.

See, there are free samples at the end of the tour. And Golden also hosts an engineering university called the Colorado School of Mines. It was fairly common practice for students to hop the tour bus every day after class to get some free Coors. I was disrupting their schedule. This caused nothing but major mental eye-rolling for me at the time. Bad enough that they wanted to drink, but being in a hurry for a free one just smacked of some sort of deep seated addiction. Now I wish I could apologize to each of them. I also wish I could hit those samples.

The pub at the end of the tour had each of the current Coors offerings on tap, as well as fountain soda. One of the beers on tap was the Coors Cutter, a de-alcoholized brew that was short lived. My partner made for the Cutter, but I forbade it. He said, "Relax, dude. It's got like a half a percent. You probably took down more than that drinking that old orange juice this morning." He asked for a Cutter, but got carded! While I was unhappy with him for his borderline sinful decision (certainly not in line with our instruction to "avoid the appearance of evil") I was shocked on two fronts. First, because I hadn't planned on doing any drinking in Colorado I'd never paid any attention to the drinking age. Neither of us were 21 yet. Second, because it was de-alcoholized.

My brain was fighting itself pretty hard. On the one hand, I wouldn't have a Cutter because it wasn't de-alcoholized enough. On the other hand I was upset that my partner was being denied something that should have been de-alcoholized enough to circumvent the drinking age. And I was still annoyed with him for ordering it in the first place. Nuts, I know. I stayed nutty that way for a decade and a half afterwards.

Totally forgot! There were girl missionaries with us on the tour. Almost like a double date at a pub. They of course, joined me in hoisting a Sprite while my companion, wanting to salvage a little rebellious spirit, quaffed a Coke. I was happier, but still disapproved of his choice. And I was further annoyed because I really wanted a Coke.

I had two more assigned companions during my time in Golden and took each of them on the tour. The experience was pretty much the same at the end each time, but we got there much faster since I'd learned not to ask questions.

Two months ago I had my first Coors, finally available here. Consuming it was as much of a religious ritual as I've participated in these past four years, laced with meaning and memories. To complete the ritual I may need to arrange to take that tour one more time.

Lord, why hast thou forbidden beer? Lovest thou me?