During the Stoned Age, when Crocodile Dundee and Outback Steakhouse roamed the earth with impunity (and nary a sliver of ironic detachment), so did a beer called Foster’s Lager.
Foster’s Lager was created in 1887 at a brewery in Melbourne built by two Americans (but of course my countrymen were responsible) and it became available in America in 1972, as packaged in 750 ml heavy metal “oil” cans fabricated at the same plant where smokestacks for WWI dreadnoughts were turned out.
These oversized cans were considered the epitome of macho by any junior high school boy in Keokuk who could actually manage to lift one.
(Meanwhile, in Floyds Knobs, I managed; then again, those were the daze of my adolescent athletic pursuits — may they rest in peace.)
Australia was an exotic and elusive concept during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, but we had Foster’s Lager and AC-DC, often both at once, the combination of which occasionally produced hallucinations of Vegemite and kangaroos.
Consequently I learned a lot in 1985, when a well-traveled but still quite youthful Australian fellow named Mark Douglas took me under his wing during a brief group trip stay in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), USSR.
Mark learned that it was my birthday, vowing to find an appropriate eatery to host a typical Russian celebration. His choice was the excellent Baku Restaurant, and I was grateful for the food and drink; unfortunately, Mark missed much of the evening, having mistakenly imagining that Aussies are the equals of Russians when it comes to consuming vodka neat.
Then as now, attitudes like this can lead to heartache (and vague nausea).
Mark might have fared better had he stuck with mass consumption of beer, but the better Soviet restaurants seldom stocked it, and the price my new friend from Oz had negotiated for entry with the doorman (circa $20 cash for two persons) included not only all we could eat, but also unlimited vodka and champagne, as opposed to mere pivo.
The overarching point: I distinctly recall quizzing Mark about Foster’s Lager, and being told in no uncertain terms that just because unschooled Americans drink sh—y beer, don’t go imagining his countrymen would follow suit.
He must have been a Toohey’s man.
By the time I returned to Europe in 1987, Foster’s Lager in America remained a fast-selling “imported” beer, which is not to say that it was brewed in Australia. That’s because one of the enduring charms of a planetary economy controlled...Read more
