Piling On

Without a doubt this has started off a bleak year. 

The media tells us that “deregulation” and “unfettered free markets” has brought our nation to the brink of financial ruin.  I opened today’s newspaper and find articles telling me it’s worse than everybody says.  Oregon’s jobless rate was 9.9% at the end of January.  The highest in 25 years.   The equivalent of the combined populations of Salem and Corvallis (214,809) wandering around jobless!

I’m not trying to pile on the bad news, but folks the great American tragedy just got worse!

In restaurants and pubs all over the Northwest people are victims of deceit and reeling from the harsh effects of the “short pour.”  Let’s say after an afternoon of motorcycle riding you decide to stop for a local “refreshment” and the pint you were just handed with an inch of foam on the top is not a pint at all, but more like 20 ounces?  It turns out that the largest percentage of volume in a pint glass is in the top inch of the glass!

It’s difficult for me to perceive how the small height at the top of a pint glass can contain so large a volume discrepancy, but the economic crisis has taken hold of the Northwest brew pubs and as a way to increase revenue, establishments are manipulating the liquid fill height.  Is there no justice?  For now Oregon might have low taxation rates on beer and why so many small brewers go into business here, but the magnitude of the deficit is alarming!

Fortunately as economic viability collapses all around us we find HOPE.

Chris Holloway is a scientist who studied electromagnetic waves and was familiar with Piaget’s research — Piaget was a scientist in the 1800’s who studied human inability to distinguish identical volumes in different sized containers — developed a business card size visual aid called the Beer Gauge which when held next to your glass indicates how much liquid you received (or didn’t) before you pay for that pint.

Why, might you ask, did I bring this up?  Life is just too short and we need to add some humor to our economic discourse.

Full disclosure: I have no affiliation or receive compensation for endorsing the Beer Gauge.

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Grab Your Nuts!

I’m talking about Goobers…peanuts! In the early days Wanker’s Corner (pronounced either “wohn-kers” or “waah-nkers”) is the name of a little pub at the intersection of Stafford and Borland Roads. From the Bud Light banners plastering the outside, to the random nicotine stained antiques and sports memorabilia hanging from the walls on the inside, “wohn-kers” offers up plenty of cheep booze and pre-cooked taco’s to feed the hundreds of riders who keep you well occupied with relentless loud pipes roaring past the shack. Yes, fall in the Northwest brings another end to Harley riding moments and now it’s the end of Taco Wednesdays.

They even had all customer service aspects covered…so considerate they are of their patrons that anyone could dispose of those pesky goober shells by just tossing them onto the floor. And if you’re too tipsy to remember the location when you call your posse/bros to have them join up, Wanker’s put their name right on their beer mugs.

It’s not well known that the original Wanker’s Corner Saloon & Cafe was opened shortly after the repeal of prohibition, in 1933. It shared space with a grocery store at the intersection of Stafford and Borland Roads, within the boundaries of Clackamas County, Oregon. Because this is not a recognized community, it has never had a post office, nor does it consistently appear on maps (although the AAA map of Oregon shows it in an inset).

As folk lore goes, the head Wanker kept collecting more and more antiques, junk, knickknacks, Americana, Australiana, movie posters, and many unidentifiable objects, that the space became too crowded, and a move to a larger building was inevitable. The Portland suburb of Wilsonville.

At the Country Store, Lois Wanker has talked about how her grandfather settled there (West Linn, Oregon area, just south of Portland) in 1895. The tavern was founded by Lois’s father in 1931 and evidently it burned down back in 1969 but they built a new one…if you could call it “new”! They own the store and lease the saloon. My research in Oregon place name books and Oregon history books revealed nothing about the place so, getting multiple sources for the information is a challenge.

The new Wankers location in Wilsonville serve up goobers to the disenfranchised and us “oil leakers” continue to post up at the Corner Saloon – the original pub on Harley nights and enjoy tacos, refreshments and good friends jawing about chrome.

Remember the Wanker motto: Go Ugly Early, and You’ll Never Go Home Alone…

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