One night I had to abandon my car out on Rt.40 in Patapsco Park and walk back to my house in Catonsville in freezing rain. On the way I met up with some guys from my high school who were on their way to see Gandhi at the old Westview Movies. It was a long movie, and they brought a lot of beer. We had the place to ourselves and would have been in great shape but when the intermission started, a couple of the empties rolled all the way down the cement floor to the front. Securing your empties is key to a good stashed-beer movie experience...particularly when there's an intermission.

Many years ago, as a teenager, I was coming home one night and I still has some beer in my mother's car. It was Winter in Vermont so I threw them in a snow bank in the front yard and forgot about it. A few months later, on a sunny Spring day, as the snow was rapidly melting, I walked out the front door and there were three cans of Bud on the front lawn. I quickly got rid of them before my parents noticed.

Back in my high school days, myself and others would sneak pony bottles (remember them?) of Miller into rock concerts at the Civic Center. We'd wear varsity jackets with the leather sleeves and put the bottles behind our upper arms. You could get three in each sleeve. But you had to keep your elbows bent to keep them from sliding down your arm and out the sleeve hole. It worked out fairly well!

Happy Thanksgiving !

During the last Ravens game at Memorial Stadium I stashed a six pack inside my coat (at the time they didn't pat you down before entering). One of the ushers caught me pulling one out and yelled for me to get rid of them. So I guzzled the beer in my hand as he watched. Of course he wasn't aware of the remaining beer in my coat!

One time, I was helping a fellow eccentric set up for his annual Guy Fawkes party, and we started dragging coolers out from his shed. Lo and behold, we discovered that one cooler had been put away a full year ago STILL FULL of beer! Said cooler had sat outside in a shed all winter, spring, summer, and fall! To make matters worse, the bottles were not industrial swill, but all craft beers of one kind or another, about half of them brought up from Texas and Missouri by a friend of his and unavailable in this area, and even a few bottles of homebrew complete with special labels! We proceeded to hose off the mold and mildew that had accumulated with the melted ice in the cooler, and managed to reconstruct most of the bottles and peeled/deteriorating labels. We were still left, as I recall, with at least two mystery bottles for "name that beer". The owner joked about writing up a waiver for folks to sign before trying the beers, but in the end only a hardy brave three or four of us even dared. All the more for us, of course. This led to his joking about burying a cooler-ful of beer for the next year's party...........

Since you saw and hopefully enjoyed my daughter's performance with the Baltimore Opera (she was Anna, the sympathetic companion and confidant of Maria Stuarda), I will use it as a thinly veiled excuse to pose a question to which I've been trying to get an answer since we lived in London more than thirty years ago. Is there any way to get authentic British Bitter here in Baltimore? I fondly remember the pubs where Best Bitter, with its relativelly low carbonation and unique taste, pub to pub, was a pleasure. But even at the more sophisticated wine-and-liquour stores here, the best I've been offered is British ale or stout -- some pretty darned good -- but not the same. Any suggestions will be much appreciated.