Miller High Life: The Shampoo of Bottled Beers

Despite the fact that recollections are lousy benchmarks for a life, I can't recall the last time I had a Miller High Life, the so-called Champagne of Bottled Beers. But now I recall that it was this afternoon at the Cabby Shack in Plymouth. Harvey had called shotgun for a roadtrip to the Buzzards Bay Tavern, but we somehow found ourselves in the Grossman's Bargain Outlet looking at windows. Before we knew it, there we were in Cabby's. Two dollar pints of shampoo.

Until then, I'm thinking that the last time I tasted that stuff was during the pre-war years at Wesleyan and before the invention of Miller Lite. High Life tended to give me a headache with the very first swig. And that was often the very last swig. Until the very next one.

But I digress. 

As a smart ass college kid, I thought I could make some pocket change working weekends at a Hartford radio station. Essentially, the gig was reading sports scores sponsored by -- you guessed it -- Miller High Life: The Champagne of Bottled Beers. You know where this is headed.

From the get go, I was calling the sponsor "The Shampoo of Bottled Beers." The weekend jock thought it was hilarious, but not so the program director. He was (and still is) Dickie Robinson, founder of Connecticut School of Broadcasting. I never went to that school, and I never got paid for my afternoon of work. But the recollection of the job left a better taste in my mouth than did Miller High Life.

But today I gave the Miller folks a second chance. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I'll give them two bucks for a clean, empty glass. Even better, give me one of those Cisco pint glasses and fill it up with the glassware's namesake! Ahh, Plymouth fog's not as salty as the Gray Lady's, but the Cisco's good anywhere.


Harvey says, "Sometimes, you get what you pay for."