Of course there was a girl involved.
There always is with this guy.
Minny, you need to write a book of your memoirs. S#it would sell out quick.
I did, took me nearly a year. Just got my Library of Congress copyright a few weeks ago.
Here's the opening chapter:
It is complete, my first book! Five plus months of laborious writing has resulted in 175+ pages. I hope to self-publish this by the end of summer. I've enclosed the introduction and the first chapter and welcome anyone's feedback on writing style, wordsmithing or if you happened to work at or with Kuether DistCo, please chime in.
INTRODUCTION
“Bill, we love these stories, but they can’t be true. There’s just no way”
I hear it all the time, over beers, while playing tennis, at dinner or simply while socializing. After a while, my friends convinced me to write them down. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, but I did want to begin a journal to document some memories. Inspired by my favorite writer, Ian Fleming, I decided around 40 to move to the Caribbean and work on self-improvement. That move took three and a half years, for various reasons including, but not limited to, the IRS, a half dozen lawsuits, overzealous law enforcement, one last attempt at love and a bunch of money I buried away and couldn’t find or retrieve for numerous reasons. Once set, I found myself under the mango trees seeking peace of mind first and foremost, and basically, for me, that meant finding a way to be more creative and fee thinking, and nothing unleashes the vibes like the sandy beaches and low-key atmosphere of the Caribbean.
I started writing this as a defacto documentary on the first half of my life spent learning everything there was to learn about the family business, Kuether Distributing, a Budweiser beer distributorship in Minneapolis, from its origins and history to its day to day operations to its margins and where there were inefficiencies, explaining my frustration as the educations I’d received, both real and in practice, were being wasted by my very own glass ceiling. The story of a family beer distributorship should be a sexy tale full of interesting tid bits, but in truth, it was just a business like any other, and what started as a journal and documentary focused on business soon evolved into telling a life story through the prism of someone who grew up differently, in that beer distributorship, with a different view of the world, framed by working daily with a chain smoking gambler father with a hair trigger temper, a stoic patriarch of a grandfather and the omnipresent picture on the wall of all our namesakes, the founder, who may have had a few skeletons in the closet himself, but somehow acquired the rights we enjoyed, most likely in a smoke filled room around either a craps table or a poker table with fast company. I learned and lived at a faster pace of life than my friends while coming of age and with that came a certain moral compass that never failed to disappoint my friends appetite for destruction or adventure.
The stories in here are all true, some are anecdotes with bits and pieces of similar locations or occurrences overlapping, some are maybe exaggerated, but the premise of each chapter is fact, the events did take place and people and characters are those that have surrounded me in life, some by choice, others by fate and a few by blood. As always, I include some historical references and information, as I like history and feel it’s important that we always remember the past, for those that don’t are doomed to repeat it.
There’s a lot of sex in the stories. I like sex and think it’s an important part of a healthy lifestyle. I also believe that sex is one of the great assets in remembering the past, certain people or the senses you felt in a place or time. Nothing compares to the carnal heat enjoyed by a man ready to mount into a woman beneath him. To try and describe an evening that was memorable, using sex or remembering how you felt around that encounter can liven up the description and make the memory easier to recall, so don’t be offended by what you read, it’s just the authors way of recollecting certain events.
With that said, enjoy my journal. The stories and anecdotes are told to put a smile on the reader's face and open up his or her mind, emotions, feelings and senses. It’ll help if you’re familiar with Minneapolis in general, but not necessary. If enough readers enjoy this material, there’s plenty more where it came from and it’d be my pleasure to write another book of history, tales, anecdotes and shenanigans, while sitting under the mango trees.
“It was time, I thought, for a beer.” - H. Thompson
I sat in the chair, the type with steel arms and veneer wood handles, quietly. Looking up at my father's combed back black hair, mustache and early afternoon facial growth. My feet did not reach the ground yet and wouldn’t for a few years.
The Tareyton cigarette hung in his mouth, pressed between his lips as he drew deep, the smoke filling his lungs, and the exhalation filling the small office. The drop ceiling tiles above exhibited many years upon years of this routine, their original white now reduced to a diminished yellowish glow. He rubbed, with the back of his right hand, the aforementioned growth and continued to look, intensely, at his reading material.
A yellow pamphlet, titled “Gold Sheet”, sat before him, numerous rows of data in each column, some circled, with values in dollars placed by them. The paper, folded so tight in the mailing process, retained, quite well I noticed, the creases, as it was laid out over his desk.
“...Miami minus two and a hook, for a nickel.”
A pause, “...LA Raiders plus three, nickel.”, “San Fran on the line, lay the 300, for a dime, uhhh and that’s all for today, talk to you tomorrow pal.” And with that he hung the phone up.
His gaze then turned to the young five year old in the chair before him, however, no sooner did he hang up, then the phone rang.
“Kuether Distributing, can I help you?”
He reached for a white legal pad, an order pad, again full of columns and numbers and boxes to indicate quantity. These were available in scores I’d noticed. Each desk in the office had a pad, and boxes of the pads were always by the door I entered from.
“Lowery Hill, ok what can we get you?...uh huh; uh huh; uh huh; deal is 15 or 28, fifteen ok, uh huh...”
This went on for five minutes. He sat, with the phone locked between his left shoulder and his tilted ear, meticulously scribbling the quantities in the proper boxes on the white legal pad, while mundanely acknowledging each figure with the standard midwestern “uh huh”.
He hung up the phone, looked at me with a grin, and asked “What’s up sport?”
“My pallet is empty and there’s too many drivers out there to get a new one.” I told him.
By this I am referring to two things. One, at five years of age I had been allowed to experiment, only on the Saturdays when the warehouse was free of other employees, driving the forklifts. This is no easy task for a child, as the perception of where exactly those forks are, at any given time, can be lost in the adrenaline rush of getting behind the wheel of anything with any moving parts or power at that age. Two, it’s my long Thanksgiving vacation and I’m in a cold warehouse with a hot glue gun, a couple hundred empty “soon to be” boxes and four pallets of various Michelob beers, which I am to mix and match into the “assembled by glue” empty boxes that are logoed as “Michelob Holiday Samplers”. This is my Friday. While my friends were shopping with their parents, or playing video games or making snowmen, I was laboring in a union shop.
It’s true, Generation X was brought up to get shit done.
I was tempted to hop on a forklift and obtain several additional pallets of the beers to be mixed at my box manufacturing station, however, the delivery trucks had begun to roll back into the warehouse, one after another. This was too risky, even I knew it, at that time. The mad dash of angry, blue-collar veterans, all Teamsters, towards the forklift charging area, seeking one of the limited supply of lifts, could have been an Olympic sport. The course language, cursing, and “any means necessary" approach to obtaining one of the better lifts (the electric ones) versus the old traditional propane powered lifts, was epic. I only knew the electric ones myself. I had no interest in being made to cry in front of these guys should I not get an electric forklift, or worse, get yelled at by a raging Teamster.
Of course, none of this occurred until after filling up at the free keg station in the driver's room. Yes, that is right, in 1985 there was free beer for the drivers and workers, while working at Kuether Distributing.
“Gene to the office, Gene to the office” thundered the command over the speaker system. Gene was the warehouse man. An old, gruff, weathered figure, his face looked wooden to me. He’d been an employee since the late 50’s, first as a helper, then a driver and now the warehouse man whose job it was to unload the semi-trucks from LaCrosse, Saint Louis or New York, that brought the inventory to the warehouse.
My first interaction with Gene was an interesting experience. Gramps (Bud) had decided to stop paying for lawn service at the warehouse and was going to buy a mower. This implied that the warehouse man was going to be doing some mowing. I was tagging along with Gramps when he came upon Gene smoking a Winston and sipping his beer.
“Gene, I'm thinking about getting a lawnmower for here...” The spectacles moved a notch lower upon his nose.
“That’s great Bud...” The dry reply came, the insinuation readily understood.
“What do you suggest, any brand loyalty, any favorites?” At five years of age, I picked up on the softening tone from Gramps.
“Bud, you go get whatever mower you want, grass don’t grow in the fucking warehouse!” Came the curt, but all to expected gruff reply, along with a long drag on the Winston, followed by an exhale through the nostrils and mouth.
Gramps cleared his throat and walked away, I was still in tow, just a yard behind now.
Gene came into the office, Winston in hand, slowly burning down the nub. “The kid needs a few more pallets, please.”
“OK Billy.” Gene then set off, taking a final drag off the cigarette and leaving its plume of smoke in the air for all the office workers to choke on.
“Get back to work kid, he’ll be back in five minutes with your beer. We’ll head out of here at six, ok, just three more hours Sport.” That was dad’s way of dangling the carrot and the stick, it was good motivation and on days I worked, I always got paid in cash at night.
Gene brought the pallets, and I went back to work in the cold warehouse, with my glue gun, mixing and matching the beers to hopefully brighten someone's holiday, but I'll guaranty you that nobody who bought those samplers would have ever guessed they were put together, case and all, by a five year old kid on this Thanksgiving holiday break.
