Beer Can Collecting

This is a picture from the little history display at the Debuque Star Brewery. It brought back memories.

I was a beer can collector in my early teens. It was fun and since I had no clue what beer was like, was the closest I could get. My friends and I would check out the trash cans down by Menomonie Park on Saturday or explore trash dumps on the sides of roads.

Astounding that I never got tetanus.

My parents tolerated it as long as I cleaned them out so my room wouldn’t smell like beer. I came home once with some acid to clean the rust of the cans…that didn’t go over well.

I recognized a few of these but not very many. At the beginning, I would look for any little change in the printing and consider it a new can. That quickly spiraled out of control.

My collection had cone tops, Billy Beer, Chief Oshkosh, and the rare (at least in eastern Wisconsin) Schell’s cans with the wildlife on them.

Don’t remember what happened to the collection. I presume that my parents disappeared the collection at some point when I wasn’t interested in it. That would have been smart of them. I don’t think I sold them, that would have been smart of me.