The soft spring evenings have returned, and baseball season. The Durham Bulls are back in the park, where white-hot lights shine against the deep purple evening sky, and I make my one visit of the year.
I’m not big on sports—no Annie Savoy, me—but I love atmosphere of a Bulls game. Wooly Bull, the mascot, runs the bases against a little kid (who always wins); and between the innings two spectators in padded costumes collide with each other in a fake sumo match.
And, on this one visit of the season, my perfect evening brought back a vivid beer memory from, maybe, 15 years ago.
That was a very hot night, later in the season, when the humidity was choking and the cicadas’ songs cut through the air. I made the trip to the concession stand for beer, and found the one booth that dispensed something besides Budweiser. I bought three pints of Samuel Adams Boston Lager in squishy plastic cups and pushed them together into a triangle between my hands.
A few steps away from the booth, I knew I was going to spill beer (I’d been a lousy waitress, and I was doing just as bad a job now), so I hunched over the cups and sucked—no, hoovered—the top inch off all three in one huge draft. And, in that second, if this had been a movie, the choir would have hit a perfect, ethereal chord: a vibrant, sustained “Ahhhh!”
I had just inhaled a veritable aerosol of Saaz hops and gorgeous malt, soft perfume and fresh meadows. The flavor was an explosion. I stood stunned in the crowded concourse, spot-lit (film pretensions lingering—“Ahhhh!”) in a moment of revelation, apart from the mass of humanity who walked by, unaware of the glorious blessing of that instant.
The crazy light faded. I made my way without spills back to my colleagues. I think I delivered the beers without explaining the missing inch, or mentioning the near-religious experience I’d just had with Sam on the concourse.
Woolly Bull was shooting t-shirts into the crowd.
