Wedded bliss over beer cans

DALTON GARDENS — Bringing about 600 old, empty beer cans into a marriage isn’t likely to make the bride-to-be drunk in love.

Brock Lambert knows this.

That’s why the man who recently moved to Dalton Gardens is giving up his can collection that dates back to his childhood days.

No, he wasn’t drinking then. He just found them.

But getting hitched is a good time to give them up.

“It’s going pretty good,” he said as he stood near a table filled with boxes of colorful cans at a garage sale in Dalton Gardens. "I’ve sold about a box worth.”

One woman was sifting through the cans, reading labels.

“Mountain Brew Beer. Downright tasty. Y’all hear? Brewed with Mountain Water,” it reads.

The beer labels are as colorful as their owner.

“Duke’s Beer.”

“Dixie Beer. 100% Pure.”

“Maximum Beer.”

“Courage Lager.”

“Drink Walter’s Beer.”

“Old Dutch: The Good Beer.”

“Beer that is beer.”

One of the first beer cans Lambert saved, he found in a garage pile out back of a mechanic shop in Kankakee, Ill., where he grew up. It was a steel, black, Budweiser malt liquor can.

“That was probably 40 or 50 years ago,” he said. “I found a pretty good chunk of those just laying around. We called it garbage picking when we were kids. It was cool being younger and having actual beer cans make us feel older and cooler.”

While friends moved on to other socially accepted hobbies like baseball cards, Lambert kept collecting beer cans.

He dug around dump sites and landfills. He checked outside bars. His father pitched in.

"When I was little, he would drink it for me and said I could have the can," Lambert said, smiling.

Most were too dented or crushed, but those that were still in their original shape, he carefully stored away.

At one point, he amassed about 1,000 beer cans. They came from different regions around America and from different countries. He has some from Ireland, Germany, Japan, Argentina and Puerto Rico.

He holds up a can of Big Barrel Australian beer.

“They like to drink beer over there, so most of their cans are the big ones,” Lambert said.

Some, he drank. Some, he found. Others were donated by friends and family who supported his habit.

There are cans that once held light beer. Premium beer. Bicentennial beer. A can of Rhinelander says it is “refreshing as Wisconsin’s North Woods."

There are English ales and Scottish lagers.

Some have dates. Like the Chief Oshkosh beer, 1962.

Schmidt was “The brew that grew with the Great Northwest.”

There’s a Simba beer can that was part of a wildlife series.

“It didn't taste that great,” he said, laughing. “I drank some of those, and it was some pretty cans but didn't taste that great.”

Many are the old pull tabs. Some were sealed and required an opener.

For the most part, the cans have been stored in boxes. But there’s limited room at their new home, so they had to go, part of that give and take that comes with wedded bliss.

Still, Lambert is keeping a few. Those are in an upstairs room, in a display case.

Those are the ones that hold good memories.

“A lot of stories behind them. I have some more emotional attachment to them,” he said. “There's a few like that, but not too many.”

Lambert said the hobby of collecting beer cans is all but gone now and there are few left who do it.

There's not a lot of money in it. But the older beer cans, even empty, are worth something. They can go for $10 to $20 each or more. Seven from Ireland, England and Scotland, he sold for $10 on Saturday.

“The older ones, obviously, if they're in better shape, they're worth even more,” he said.

But a good marriage?

That's better than any beer.

Well, any beer can.