A Foam Olive Branch

I believe that StinkRock and I can at least agree on the importance of beer in history.

This article reminded me of something I read in The Great Bridge by David McCullough.  It's a history of the design and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and I am a huge enough dork that I not only read it in just about one sitting (on a flight to London) but I thought it was an excellent book.  It is certainly an example of McCullough's work before he started writing these annoying history-as-grand-opera biographies.  (Here's a fun game - read one of McCullough's later books, like John Adams or 1776, and drink a shot of gin every time you find a description of somebody structured like this: "Although (historical figure) was (short, fat, bald, diminuitive, or some other negative), he was the greatest (orator, general, statesman or other achievement) of his day."  Bonus points if you can find two people who happen to be the same "greatest" of the day.  I guarantee you they are in there.)

Anyhoo, one of the fascinating parts of the book was the description of the daily life of the men who actually labored on the bridge.  I had instant indigestion when I learned that most of them started the day with something called "beer soup," which was a mixture of beer, eggs and some other stuff warmed up.  It's a wonder anything got done because those guys must have been hammered from dawn to dusk.