Trouble with the Brewers, More Trouble at Home

Canada loves beer. Beer and rye whiskey. There are some who prefer wine, especially those out there in Quebec, but those in the small town of Maggot Creek want things simple. They want a cold beer from the ice-box after a day of plowing or haying. They want it on the porch, watching the sun setting. The dog or the children or both in the yard screaming. A rye, perhaps, after dinner. Rye and coke or ginger ale. Cold with cubes of ice. And hockey. The beer just flows at the games. Flows like tears at a Ukranian funeral, as Norman's mother would say. The local team, which includes 16 of the twenty-two male teens, is always the scene of at least one off-ice fight a month during the season. Beer-fueled, Rev. Traherne, would say. Though he was known to sneak a beer at the game.

This is how Norman knew that the tavern would succeed. The beer would certainly flow. The people would drink. The music play, if he could fix that old player in the garage. But there was one problem: he couldn't get the beer. Old McCutcheon ran the nearest brewery up in Glasgow's Cove (Don't ask anyone how the town got the name - no one knows). It was run out of a converted barn, with his five sons helping out. All of them looked nearly alike, couldn't tell one from one another. All with names starting with an M. Michael, Malcolm, Matthew, Matthew James (known as Jim), and Menzies. Good Scottish names, he would say. Daughters, also, were named preferably with an M. Mary, of course, Madeline, Martha, and Grace. The M was a tradition he intended to keep up. Rigidly in the case of the boys and optionally in the case of the girls. Girls needed names to suit their characters, the characters of the boys he would shape himself. "You name your boys with your head," he would say. "Your girls you name with your heart."

Thus the other two girls were name Elizabeth and Anna. They were both married now and living elsewhere. One in Winnipeg and the other in Kenora. They had their own lives.

Either way this McCutcheon ran his brewery the way that Hitler had run Germany. He kept his nose in, oversaw everything, made sure that everything was done to his own exacting standards. His own grandfather had started the business and he would make sure that nothing was changed. Only the best hops and barley, none of that white refined sugar. He designed labels, named brands, checked quality, created recipes. Worked eighteen hour days. Nothing less was expected from his sons. His youngest washed the tanks, spent hours scrubbing the insides of ten foot tanks. He always smelled of detergent.

But he would sell Norman no beer. Twice he had driven to the brewery in Glasgow's Cove and both times he was chased off with no reason given. But it was the only brewery within a reasonable distance. He didn't know what he was going to do.

On friday night, after the traditional fried chicken and mashed potato dinner, he had sat on the porch and watched the sun set. It was nearly seven when Heidenworn, the newspaper editor,

Welcome to the StubbyBottle Tavern

Established 1949

Norman Collins started the StubbyBottle with $600 in cash - loaned to him from his mother - an old truck to pick up the beer and liquor and three tables with eight chairs. That was it. He was eighteen, with the jowls of a sixty year old that wobbled and churned when he spoke. His hair was thinning even at that age, and a cigar jutted out from his lips. Farm life, he told his father, wasn't for him, even though he was the eldest son. That had led to a rout, that led to rage, that led to physical confrontation, that led to punches, that led to broken furniture and complaints from the neighbours of two men throwing empty beer bottles at each other on their lawn and nearly catching Mrs. Traherne on the head as she walked her dog down the street. Eventually the Mounties were called in, and Constable Braunier, a burly 280 pounder, took each of them by the scruff of their shirts to the creek and tossing them in.

"This ain't the place to be doin' this," he scolded them, as he plunged their heads into this tiny tributary of the Red River. "We're gonna have none of this. Not in my town. Not when I'm tryin' to rest for the day. Not when old Traherne is tryin' to walk her dog, that bloody mutt. Her husband's my wive's minister. I'll hear 'bout it tonight, I tell you. Don't need this, don't need it at all. So you keep your disputes inside, no bottle throwing or fists outside, or you'll both spend a few nights down in Portage at the jail. Don't you doubt me."

He plunged their heads in the water a fourth time for good measure and so the lesson would stick.

"Keep your fightin' inside," he said as they walked dripping up the hill to the house. "I'd rather have you people tossing around chairs and breakin' dishes inside and dealing with you wife, than my wife taking me to task for not doin' my job."

He drove away in the old constable's dusty gray-coloured Chevy, his face red with exhaustion and anger and the hope that his wife would go easy on him. His stomach churned as if he was five years-old. Damn he hated the prospect. His lunch would never settle now. The gears ground as he shifted and the car lurched and his trugeon lurched to the passenger side floor.

At fifty-eight, he was getting far too old. He drove past the church where he was sure that old minister was already composing a sermon on the evil of drink and how the mounties were honour-bound to thresh out the troubles of a drinking nation, even it meant not a wink of sleep. His wife would tie his tie extra tight the coming sunday. The old Monkey-brained twit who ran the weekly paper would write an editorial on the subject. He needed a drink, and he couldn't get one now. The whole town would chatter if he did. The W. I. would have his head on a post. Then the Masons would have at him for their wive's fury. And the Knights of Columbus would complain to keep things even.

He stopped to buy a coke.

What the town needed was a tavern. He couldn't wait for Norman to start up. He'd be first in line.