Ok, so I am one week late in posting this on its 31 August anniversary, but better late than never right?
I told Dad when I first took over in 07 that we needed to raise beer prices because he had not done so in several years despite having received a number of price increases from the distributors. He reluctantly agreed with me and in September 2008 we bumped prices up accordingly.
Back then he was charging $1.50 for non-imported beers such as Bud, Coors and Miller. However, a couple nights a week he had his version of a “Happy Hour” from 4 to 7 p.m. where he sold these beers for a buck. Once I took over, I never enforced the 4 to 7 hours and on those days of the week ended up with the You-Know-Who’s-of-the-World in the Store sucking down dollar beers all day and night long.
To commemorate the 08 price increase, we held a I Drank the Last Dollar Beer party on Sunday 31 August and had some t-shirts (above) made up for the event. I recall when I picked up the shirts from Chesapeake Embroidery a few days before the party, Amy saying to me “I guess this is this your nice way of telling your customers that the prices are going up?”
On the day of the party, my initial plan was to have Dad autograph his Buzzy signature on each shirt for whomever got one. He did so on the one shown above for Lori McKay, but it was tough going because he was a little shaky at the time and it was hard for him to write on the shirt. I quickly gave up on having him try and sign each shirt. As far as I know, Lori’s is the only one that he signed that day.
Musically, I missed another August anniversary shout out and that was Jackson Browne’s 27 August 1977 concert at Merriweather Post (click here.)
There is no video of Jackson doing this tune that night at Merriweather but here is the audio that eventually was included on his Running on Empty album. The comment below was made by someone in the accompanying Youtube comments section.
