Putting the Memories in Their Place — A Requiem for the Fox River High Life

I’ve been in the market for a new macro Lager to keep in the back of my fridge. Rainier filled that space for about three years after I moved to Washington State, but then I read the can a little closer and discovered it’s brewed at the primary Coors (now Molson Coors) plant in Colorado—a non-union facility that was made so by some of the fiercest union-busting and workplace discrimination in modern beer history. Now I’m shopping around. When PBR didn’t do it for me, I gave an old acquaintance a second chance: Miller High Life (which, while still Molson Coors, is union-made). 

It had been a while since I’d had it last, long enough to forget the flavor, and neglect the sensory links between smell, taste, and memory. I got home and took a sip from a tallboy, and then I wasn’t home anymore. I was back at my Uncle Ron’s rustic house along the Fox River, in marshy, unincorporated McHenry, Illinois. I grew up about 500 feet away, in a raised ranch he’d helped my parents find while my mother (his sister) was pregnant with me. 

We didn’t live along the river ourselves, but the people who did—like my uncle—always came off a little more colorful than the rest of McHenry. We were too far from Chicago for waterfront property to price out the working class, so those homes tended to be diverse, well lived-in, sometimes vibrant and sometimes dilapidated. The grass was crabbier, the dogs dirtier and happier. Pontoon boats (Ron called them “party-barges”) were everywhere, and Fourth of July fireworks always boomed a little louder along the Fox. I imagine that’s why Ron chose to make his home there.

Ron passed away nine years ago, but the High Life took me a decade beyond that—before the house was eviscerated and sold, before the 2008 housing crash dragged it and Ron’s life underwater, and before I could legally drink. I was 11 again, taking a covert sip on the long sidewalk linking Ron’s construction company truck and detached woodshop with the riverfront house he’d built. I blanched, naturally, but was thrilled that he’d offered it to me while my dad wasn’t looking. At the time, this explosion of neurotransmitters was its own illicit pleasure, but in hindsight, I wouldn’t describe it as a fond memory. None of my memories of Ron are fully happy anymore. That’s partly his fault, and partly mine. 

PARADISE CITY

It was the High Life’s razorlike bittersweetness that split me in two. I’m no Cicerone or beer judge, and there’s a sliver of joyless overanalysis in every beer I try. But when I tasted High Life again, Ron burst through, soundtracked by Guns N’ Roses and loud enough to drown out any preoccupations with style. Thoughts of business mergers faded before the loud snaps of dog run pulleys hitting their anchors. And the politics of beer dissolved into the glow of a bug zapper light in desperate need of cleaning. The beer refracted into the myriad moments of Ron’s life when he served as my friend, mentor, and cautionary tale. That might sound like he drank too much, but he didn’t—at least not until later. Ron with his High Life stood out, rather, for his orthogonal place in my life. 

“At Ron’s house there was always High Life or Old Style in the fridge (plus red cream soda for the kids), with a hefty side of cigarette smoke. Koozied cans lined the edge of Ron’s pool table, filled coolers in his little red bowrider, and fueled all-night parties around his massive fire pit. I imagine one or two appeared when he cremated Thunder, his late wolf hybrid, in the same pit—but Ron did that alone.”

At Ron’s house there was always High Life or Old Style in the fridge (plus red cream soda for the kids), with a hefty side of cigarette smoke. Koozied cans lined the edge of Ron’s pool table, filled coolers in his little red bowrider, and fueled all-night parties around his massive fire pit. I imagine one or two appeared when he cremated Thunder, his late wolf hybrid, in the same pit—but Ron did that alone. 

Everything about that house was his because he’d built it that way. It was a rotting, leaning wreck when he bought it, and under his hands it transformed into an earth-toned dream: dark wood everything, a jacuzzi master bath, Red Dog bar signs, and a beveled glass window that cast little rainbows in the morning sun. 

Ron was a distinct presence in my life, a highly intelligent person who became a union master carpenter in part because he hated wearing suits. He had an infectious belly laugh, liked to cave dive in Mexico, and carried Christmas presents over his shoulder in a sack every year. I never saw him without a beard.

Nine years on, my mother still says that Ron would give a person the shirt off his back. He helped my parents find a house when I was born and they were broke. When my dad had trouble getting work, Ron took him along on jobs. Hell, my childhood dog was one of Thunder’s offspring. But he could also be a stubborn egoist at times, choosing to break when he could have bent.

Ron was in many ways a counterweight to my dad, a far calmer and more disciplined man in comparison. Family gatherings on Dad’s side revolved around seated, polite conversation. Ron dug his own horseshoe pits specifically to avoid that dynamic. Ron was social, and tried to bring Dad out of his shell. He was patient and kind about it, and I think Dad opened up a little. He scored a few ringers in those years, at least.

I was and am between them. Each had strong positives worth emulating—Ron’s bold creativity and Dad’s calm reason. My imperative was never to choose one over the other, but rather to balance them effectively. I gradually realized that over years of walking, then driving, between our homes. 

Dad slowly and patiently built a home business. He was active and present in his kids’ lives. He put us through college, and I’m only now beginning to appreciate how gracefully he handled those teenage “hate everything about your parents” years.

Ron showed me what it was like to build something with your hands. He brought me to construction sites, and even let me run free in a Bobcat. He took us camping a few times, and taught me to play chess. But he wouldn’t have ferried me to scout meetings or bowling leagues (it was the Midwest in the ’90s, after all). He made a few benign promises he didn’t keep. The unraveling started slowly, and then seemed to happen all at once. 

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

That’s when the High Life ended. Ron’s marriage collapsed and he wound up alone, which he struggled to accept. His stubbornness cost him his job before the 2008 recession crushed his entire livelihood. He wound up a 50-something grunt driving hours every day and dodging brown recluse bites to help build a power plant in Wisconsin. Some days he’d talk fondly about watching sunrises from 50 feet up on a scaffold. But more often, he seemed to be tired, bitter, and lonely. The financial crisis left him behind on his mortgage. There was other debt. His family was estranged. And there’s a non-zero chance the asshole next door poisoned his dog for barking too much. 

We all tried to help, but I don’t think he understood the difference between reversing damage and rebuilding, and it took its toll. I went from seeing crushed beer cans in the recycling when I visited to seeing too many cans to discovering empty bottles of cheap liquor, hidden in crevices where his girlfriend and Mom wouldn’t find them. 

During college, I spent a summer driving over to his house early each day. I’d bring breakfast sometimes, and we’d eat it sitting on his decaying dock, watching the sun reflect on the river. I was helping him gut that house to its bones, because he’d rebuilt it from a sunken mess of nails into his dream home of 20 years, and if some goddamn bank was taking it then he’d unbuild it too. I was 21 years old, and I thought that by helping him scavenge what he could from the foreclosed house, by carting his unkempt possessions all over town, and listening to him rant about banks and politicians and sheriffs, that I could show him he was still loved. Help him choose a better path for his life, and maybe see my old uncle again. But in retrospect he was sitting in his own pain, and I was just enabling him. 

The more time I spent with him, the more I became a participant in his volatile life. Before I’d enjoyed the dubious luxury of merely watching my parents make the overtures and bear the fallout. Now I was an active player in the game, and in turn, Ron tried to manipulate me into buying his car, asked me to do his household chores, and left me insulting voicemails when we bickered. It gave me a misplaced feeling of adulthood—after years on the sidelines, I was finally helping Mom and Dad by carrying a sliver of the repercussions that came from trying to help Ron. But nothing got better, and he alienated each of us in time. Eventually, I was ready to hurt him back. 

“During college, I spent a summer driving over to his house early each day. I’d bring breakfast sometimes, and we’d eat it sitting on his decaying dock, watching the sun reflect on the river. I was helping him gut that house to its bones, because he’d rebuilt it from a sunken mess of nails into his dream home of 20 years, and if some goddamn bank was taking it then he’d unbuild it too.”

I don’t even remember why we went to see him anymore, or why the shouting started. I just know that it was petty and unnecessary. But when Mom had had enough and turned to leave, I looked him in the eye and told him I was disappointed in him. That’s what Ron’s dad had always said to him, clearly and calmly, when Ron had really fucked up. I knew it would penetrate him in a way his neighbors or bill collectors couldn’t, so I said it. Our relationship got a lot more distant after that.

Two years later, I was at Purdue University working on a PhD (thanks Dad), where I was more than once criticized for writing and speaking too “folksy” (thanks Ron). I got a call, and was driving up I-65 soon after.

He was unconscious by the time I arrived. All I could do was stand beside Mom and his kids and watch Uncle Ron die of liver disease in a McHenry hospital bed in April 2013. I missed whatever chance I had to say something meaningful to him. I would have said something nice.

Those years made it difficult to nurture the side of me that he’d gifted. I keep saying I’ll set up a little woodshop in my garage and I keep not doing it. I’ve had a harder time being daring and passionate as a recovering academic, though I’ve kept more of the ego than I should. I’ve held onto my dad’s patience, but still struggle to weather my own storms. I often wonder whether I’ve lost the embers of Ron’s fire that could have helped me overcome them—or worse, whether I’ve stoked them so much that they root me in my problems. 

A sip of High Life isn’t going to fix anything. But resetting to a few older memories of Ron might help a little. I love Ron, even if that love is stretched in opposing directions. Love is not determined by weighing vices against virtues, and so my love never broke. He broke. And I broke a little, too, when I couldn’t fix him.

I’ll keep High Life around for now. I want to remember. I’ll think about the laughter even if it comes with the pain. I’ll think about my childhood with him even if it reminds me why he’ll never meet my kids. Because he deserved more than the nothing he got.

Mom did a little writing after Ron passed, just for herself. She recently let me read it for the first time. One thought stands out among the pages: “Make your memories pleasant for you have many. Don’t forget the not-so-good memories, but put them in their place.” I’m trying, Mom.

Words by Brian Alberts
Illustrations by Colette Holston