Measured and Found Wanting: Snippet #52 (Fond Farewell Edition)

Co-workers honor Michael on his final day of work. He doesn't let on that he's built up a profitable business in the craft beer industry, which took off at a meeting during a West Coast beer festival.

“We’re going to miss you, Mike, rotten puns and all”, says Ray Guy¹: Michael’s best friend at the Institute for Public Analysis, where Michael is bidding a reluctant farewell. It’s a mild and cloudless Friday, one of the two dozen days of perfect summer weather Michigan’s tourist industry advertises to the world. So beautiful a day that even the Institute’s workaholics are enjoying a long lunch outside. Michael and Ray are sitting at one of the picnic tables outside the Plymouth Road entrance. Jim Otto and Art Shell are sitting across from Ray and Michael, waiting for the two oldheads to dispense wisdom.

Ray says,“Mike and I go way back. All the way back to the National Seat Belt Observation Study. That was seventy-seven. People didn’t wear belts, mainly because they didn’t have to². The percentage of drivers who wore their belts was in the low double digits. Believe it or not, the feds were more concerned with the fifty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit, which everyone outside of D.C. hated³. Remember the song ‘Convoy’?”

“CB radio. A big fad for a short time”.

“My grandfather was really into it. His handle was ‘The Silver Fox’. And no, Charlie Rich didn’t sue him for infringement”.

Bill starts laughing. "Here it comes. Mike's Wayback Machine. Next he’s going to tell you about Huntley and Brinkley smoking in the booth during political conventions”.

“They’re starting to crack down on smoking. I was in California last month, and they’re going to ban it in bars”.

“That’ll never fly in Michigan. People will tell the cops, ‘you can pry that Marlboro out of my cold dead hand’”.

“Dead is right. My phys ed teacher in high school called them ‘coffin nails⁴’”. Michael pauses. “Did I ever tell you about the place in Prague where Sarah and I stopped for beers? We were the only two people who weren’t smoking. I thought the bartender was going to throw us out for breaking the rules. He was a real dickhead⁵. Thought he could jerk us around by pretending he didn’t understand English. Sarah got him back by asking for the restroom key in Polish, which her grandmother spoke. Polish is close enough to Czech that he couldn’t play games any longer”⁶.

“What possessed you to go in there?”

“I saw it in an online guide to Prague bars. Wrote about it in Brews News.” The story, “Cross-Czeching”, was one of Michael's favorites for absurdity alone. But the story also earned him national recognition. It won first place in the Beer Writers of America’s Travel Writing category. “Guys, that fine establishment took first prize for decrepitude, but the bars in the towns this place sent me for projects were right up there. The towns themselves were real shitholes”.

“For you, Mike, those towns counted as continuing education. You majored in American Studies”.

“You know how we ended up there? Guy by the name of George Blanda, who retired five years ago. He wrote a computer program that randomly picked the towns we went to. Places like Edema, Minnesota. I swear he built in a shitholes-only algorithm. I once asked him ‘Why do you never send us someplace nice, like Miami Beach or San Diego’? He looked at me like I was crazy”.

“As much as you complain, Mike, you liked being out on the road”.

“Can’t deny it. But that project was a true baptism of fire. None of my other projects came close. Except maybe the Dangerous Driving Acts study, which was another IPA classic. After that, it was mostly desk work for me. But as you know, I never passed up a good road trip”.

Ray says, “Mike’s going to leave some big shoes to fill. He’s the king of the Fifty State Survey. Cat-herder extraordinaire”. At IPA, Michael discovered that he had an extraordinary talent for collecting and organizing facts. And that he enjoyed it. One of the first research projects he headed dealt with penalties for multiple-offense DUI. He followed that up with a related study, involving deferred prosecution and charge reduction in DUI cases, practices he learned about first-hand during the two summers he interned at the City Attorney’s office. Michael liked Dan’s phrase “perennial first offenders” so much that he gave his report that title. Dr. Fred Biletnikoff, the director of IPA at the time, was so impressed with Michael's work that he created a Legislative Analysis Department and made Michael the head of it. The promotion meant fewer road trips, but a hefty increase in salary and free tickets to Michigan football games.

“Have you figured out what you’re going to do in Jersey?”

“Become Sarah’s kept man. Just kidding. I’ll be doing contract work for IPA, for starters. And writing my column for The Brews News. It doesn’t pay much, but it gets me free invites to festivals”.

What Michael never admitted, even to his closest friends, was that he’d been moonlighting. Thanks to IPA, he had access to U-M’s mainframe, on which he ran the database software that Minerva was developing. At night, Michael looked for amendments to state legislation and liquor authority rules dealing with licensing, and for new court decisions from dram-shop cases, and uploaded them to the mainframe. He was being paid for his work by the Microbrewery and Brewpub League. His pay went from just enough to cover bar tabs to a significant revenue stream as the nation’s brewery count climbed toward one thousand⁷. Michael's relationship with the League began after a series of his columns about the three-tier distribution system appeared in The Brews News family of newspapers. He explained that it was created by state legislatures after the repeal of Prohibition, and gave the big breweries a way to fend off the craft beer industry. It took years of lobbying by the League and state brewers’ guilds to persuade lawmakers to allow microbreweries and brewpubs to sell directly to customers and, in some states, even self-distribute their products.

On a Saturday morning, Roy Halladay, the League's executive director, called Michael. He explained that his staff was getting bombarded with questions about legal issues from brewery owners: licensing, trademark, premises liability, dram shop, you name it. Michael explained that while he wasn’t actively practicing law, he was staying on top of legal developments affecting the industry; and in particular, was following brewery-related legislation—a task that became much easier once states started putting their statutes and administrative rules online. Roy asked Michael if he would be interested in doing “something like that” for the League. Michael said he was, even though Roy warned him, “The pay isn’t great. Most of our members are startups”. Something Michael already knew. Michigan didn’t legalize brewpubs until a couple of years before Halladay called⁸. To help his state’s craft brewing industry catch up, Michael made sure photos of the local establishments’ grand openings got into the Midwest Brews News. His first brewery client was Tad Wieman, the owner of a brewpub in downtown Ann Arbor. Michael walked Tad through the licensing process; his compensation consisted of a lifetime membership in the mug club (Mug #4), half a dozen T-shirts with the pub’s logo, and a “Wieman’s Wolverine Ales” baseball cap. While getting Tad up and running, he discovered that using that “Wolverine” singular in a business’ name was acceptable, but using “Wolverines” plural would bring down the wrath of U-M’s intellectual-property attorneys.

Roy invited Michael and Sarah to the Oregon Brewers Festival, where they could finalize Michael’s arrangements with the League. He also arranged for press credentials for Michael, who was going to feature the two Michigan breweries invited to pour this year; and for Sarah, who’d become serious about photography and offered to take pictures for the Brews News.

The day before he and Sarah left for Portland, Michael got a call from Hal Newhouser, the owner of Spartan Brewing Company in Kalamazoo. “Are you looking for a story idea? Michael wasn’t, but out of politeness didn’t say so. “There’s a couple who are regulars at my place. They met at the Oregon Brewers Festival two years ago. They getting married there this weekend.”

“And…?” People get married at festivals all the time.

“But get this. Both of them graduated from Kalamazoo College. Five years apart, so they never met on campus. But they met up in Portland, and one thing led to another. There’s your story”.

Somewhat reluctantly, Michael said, “I’ll track them down. They usually do festival weddings on Saturday”.

The couple from K College was on Michael’s mind on the flight to Portland. What were the chances of their meeting?—he tried to mentally calculate them—while Sarah watched the in-flight movie. Expected values and probabilities and variables fascinated him. Granted, that couple had two things in common—their alma mater and love of beer--so the conversation probably wouldn’t die before it got interesting. Still, what were the odds of someone flying two thousand miles from home and finding the person they fall in love with and marry, an alum of the same school, without someone--a friend, a roommate, a relative—intervening to make that happen? Fifty to one? No, higher. Triple digits for sure. Michael continued to ponder. How many people who’d read a story about that couple would say that God brought them together? Some said that about him and Sarah. That never sat well with him because it raised more questions than it answered. What about people like Daniel’s parents, who are a terrible match. Was it God’s idea to bring those two together? If so, was that His idea of a practical joke? After all, He’s all-knowing and therefore knew they’d end up fighting like cats. What a warped sense of humor. And let’s not get started on “God is testing you”. Treating human beings like laboratory rats? Do that to rats nowadays, and a delegation from PETA will show up and demand a word. Even Sarah, hard-nosed as she is, thinks it was fate or kismet that brought them together. It drives Michael crazy. It irks him even more when Sarah says that someone is “blessed”. Why is that person blessed? Did he pick the right numbers in the lottery? And conversely, what about a person who’s cursed with a disfiguring disease or born with a low IQ? What did she do to deserve that? Is that the kind of justice an all-loving God metes out?

It is an unwritten rule of beer festival fashion that one must wear souvenir clothing from some other venue, preferably one far away. At Friday’s session, Michael wore a T-shirt bearing the image of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame⁹. He was willing to endure the ribbing from festival-goers; the Irish barely finished with a winning record last season, and laid an egg in what Sarah called The Weed-Whacker Bowl¹⁰. Michael bought the T-shirt in South Bend at Under the Dome Brewing Company, where he and Sarah stopped after the Blue-Gold Game. The brewery wasn’t in business very long, despite an amusing name, a prime downtown location, and some of the finest brewery art he’d ever seen. That was because the owner, who’d made his money in theme restaurants and knew next to nothing about beer, hired a con man who passed himself off as a master brewer who’d trained at Weihenstephan¹¹. Before long, the brewery became synonymous with infected beer. That by itself wasn’t particularly surprising, plenty of breweries poured faulty beers back then. What did amaze Michael was that Notre Dame’s administrators never went after Under the Dome for using one of the school’s most beloved images—right under their noses. He was even more amazed to discover that the school didn’t own the copyright for that image.

The wedding took place on Saturday afternoon under an arbor of hop bines. “Fourth one this afternoon”, a Celebrator writer from San Francisco told him. “The redheaded lady in the white robes does all the weddings here. Makes mead, too”. Sarah took photos of the K College couple’s wedding. Midwest Brews News paid her fifty dollars for the photos. She made a copy of the check and framed it in her office.

After Saturday’s session, Michael and Sarah enjoyed pints and pizza with Roy at a factory-turned-brewery in the Pearl District¹². The weather, dry and warm, had a mellowing effect on everyone, the meeting was relaxed and cordial. It set the tone for Michael’s relationship with the League, which proved to be practically seamless. Michael's work brought more clients his way. He guided them through the startup paperwork, the permitting process, and the occasional trademark dispute. He soon discovered that it was almost impossible to defeat a big brewery wielding a cease-and-desist order. The national brands had enough money to crush the little guys in court. That experience led Michael to come up with Hermann’s Theory of Cheap Rights: if a legal right costs more to defend than it’s worth, then it doesn’t exist to begin with. He used those very words when talking to brewery owners. Tad Wiemann wasn’t the only owner who was strapped for cash. Michael accumulated an impressive collection of swag. Bottle openers. Tap handles. An entire shelf of mugs. And a stack of stock certificates suitable for framing but not much else.

At afternoon break, a couple dozen IPA employees bring a cake into the break room. Dr. John Madden walks in. A rare appearance for IPA's people-shy Director. With great ceremony, he hands Michael a gift-wrapped box and tells him, “Show everyone what’s inside”.

Michael unwraps the present. Three blue golf shirts with the maize-and-blue IPA logo. Michael holds them up.

“Top quality. Made right here in the U.S.A., and especially for you”. Madden says.

Ray passes out Solo cups and fills them with Vernor’s. “Drink up. You won’t find this golden nectar in Jersey”. The room toasts Michael.

Dr. Madden shakes Michael’s hand and say, “We’re going to miss you”. Then he quickly excuses himself.

Ray asks Michael, “Did you have any problem selling your house?”

“None at all. In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Griffey offered fifteen thousand above our asking price. The neighborhood has become a magnet for couples with kids, ever since Napier was declared a Gold Star School District”.

“Bet you’re happy to get out of there”.

“The feeling was mutual. Our next-door neighbors threw a Happy Fizzies Party¹³ the moment our ‘For Sale’ sign went up”.

“Life in suburbia never suited you, Mike. You once called the minivan a ‘badge of slavery¹⁴’”.

“Always will be”.

© 2025 by Paul Ruschmann. All rights reserved.

Snippet #53 will be published on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.

1. The names of Institute for Public Analysis staffers are taken from the Oakland Raiders of the Al Davis era. Davis uttered the slogan “Just win, baby!”, which became the motto of Raiders players and fans.

2. New York was the first state to require drivers and passengers to wear seat belts. That law took effect December 1, 1984. The only state that does not require adults to wear seat belts is New Hampshire, whose license plates bear the motto "Live Free or Die.”

3. Congress enacted the 55-mph National Maximum Speed Limit in 1974 as an energy conservation measure in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. Even after the gasoline shortage abated, the law remained in place because it helped reduce highway fatalities. It was finally repealed in 1995. As it turned out, the 55-mph speed limit didn’t make much of a dent in gasoline consumption; the actual savings were estimated at between 0.5 and 1 percent.

4. The health-conscious teacher also lectured his class on the evils of alcohol. He poured vodka into a flask, then dropped a worm in it. The worm died instantly. The teacher then asked the class, “What lesson have you learned from this?” One of Michael’s wisenheimer classmates answered, “If you drink alcohol, you’ll never get worms”.

5. Blbec in Czech.

6. Based on a true story. In 1999, the author and his wife visited Branicky Sklipek Pivnice, a workingman’s bar: a vanishing institution everywhere, including Prague. The establishment apparently still exists—despite the Czech government’s ban on smoking in bars, which took effect in 2017.

7. According to the Brewers Association, the nation’s brewery count reached an all-time high of 9,761 in 2023.

8. In fact, Michigan was the last Midwest state to legalize brewpubs, doing so in December 1992. Since then, state lawmakers have recognized craft beer as a source of revenue and tourism, and have become much more craft-friendly.

9. One of the beers brewed by the Mishawaka Brewing Company, a brewpub that operated from 1992 until 2008, was Four Horsemen Ale. The pub did a brisk business in T-shirts bearing the iconic image of the Horsemen.

10. The Independence Bowl, played in Shreveport, Louisiana, debuted in 1976 to celebrate the nation’s Bicentennial. In 1990, it became one of the first college bowl games to use a title sponsor; it became the “Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl”. Because the Independence Bowl was synonymous with “fleabag” from its inception, the “Weed-Whacker” jokes wrote themselves.

11. Weihenstephan State Brewery, a former monastery now under the ownership of the Bavarian government, claims to be the world’s oldest brewery, dating back to 1040. The brewery campus is home to Weihenstephan Science Center of the Technical University of Munich, which offers the “Brewer Cursus Weihenstephan” certificate program. 

12. A formerly industrial neighborhood that has been converted to offices, high-rise condos, and art galleries. It was also the home of BridgePort Brewing Company, an establishment the author and his wife visited several times. Sadly, the brewery-restaurant closed for good in 2019.

13. Fizzies were tablets that created a "carbonated" soft drink when added to water. During the 1960s, they were as popular as Kool-Aid, and were promoted under the slogan ''Happy Fizzies Party'“.

14. Inexcusable hyperbole on Michael’s part. A “badge of slavery” is a legal or social restriction imposed on a person based on their race or ethnicity. The phrase is often used to describe post-13th Amendment discrimination against people of color—certainly not whitey-whites like Michael.