Drink Deep, or Taste Not ...

It's rainy as hell today, but I had a haircut appointment and a bill to put in the mail so I made my soldierly way uptown. As a reward afterward I stopped at the local fancy bar for a fancy beer. I got a Victory Golden Monkey and enjoyed it at my leisure—hey, it's the weekend—and chatted with the servers. A woman came in and sat at a table by the window, and after a while a guy came in and sat down with her. The barmaid came up and asked him what he wanted, and he asked what they had, and she gave him the spiel: 20 beers on tap, from Britain and Belgium and all around, celebrated breweries all, and lots more in bottles if that wasn't enough variety.

Evidently he asked for a Yuengling, which is a creditable but not terribly interesting Pennsylvania lager. It's America's oldest continuously operating brewery, but they haven't learned much in all that time—the beer is best appreciated after you've mowed the lawn for several hours in oppressive summer heat. At other times, it's pretty forgettable. The server walked away, and I guess she  wasn't impressed with his beer-tasting sophistication, because she said, "Yuengling it is, you Sally."

I leaned in to the bartender. "Did she just say," I asked him, "'Yuengling it is, you Sally?'"

"Yes," he said. "I haven't heard that expression in a while."

"I've never heard it at all," I said, "but you can pretty much get the gist. Does she know him, or is she just really outspoken?"

"A little bit of both, I think," he said.

I finished up, declined another—moderation in all things, that's what I say—and got up to go. And started chuckling. "Yuengling it is, you Sally!" I splashed through the puddles and laughed to myself about that the whole way home.