Hooray! I just expanded my wardrobe today with five new T-shirts from John’s Grocery (a.k.a. Dirty John’s), an Iowa City landmark and holy shrine of fine libations. It turns out that they opened a Web store a while back, and they now sell so much breweriana (especially beer glasses) that they have a full-time employee to handle it. They even threw in a free John’s beer glass and some Orval coasters with my order. I told A that I wanted to leave a portion of my estate to John’s (and another to the place that sold me my first beer) in my will. But for the grace of these two fine institutions, I may have been content to drink swill, or not enjoy beer at all.

Side note: when the box arrived, I mentioned to A that John’s had been my beer source all through school, even though I didn’t turn 21 until a month after I graduated. We couldn’t remember how on earth I was able to buy booze under age. In the dorms, my roommate Doug W. had a fake ID (and famously spent $700 the night before the first day of spring semester freshman year stocking our room’s bar). But after that, when we lived in the house, I must have gotten it from my older roommates like Eric S. Maybe it’s a good thing that I can’t remember how. (I still get carded, even at 31, so maybe that’s karma for you.)