Huntington Beer, History of Fesenmeier Brewing Company, History of Little Switzerland Brewing Company - Charge Story Involving Ernie Salvatore, Jr.

A CHARGE STORY

You'll Get a Charge Out of This!

My oldest brother, Ernie, came up from Cincinnati in September 2005 to see the Rolling Stones with me. We were in my beer room before the show checking out my cans, and I asked him if he ever drank anything from the old brewery in Huntington. It turns out that he had an amusing story in which the brewery figures prominently. It also marks a significant milestone in his beer-drinking history. The first time Ernie ever got drunk was on Charge Beer!

When he and his buddies were teenagers they had a camp-site overlooking I-64 in the woods near our house and one night they decided to stay there and drink beer. Up until then my brother had one or two beers on different occasions, but he'd never been certifiably "intoxicated."

They gave an older friend money for the beer and agreed to meet at a predesignated location, (underneath one of the I-64 overpasses) and the guy showed up with a case of Charge Beer in cans! They took the beer and hiked up to their camp-site in the woods on the other side of the Interstate, where they indeed achieved a significant level of intoxication, although the intent wasn't so much to simply get drunk as it was a chance to sit around with friends and enjoy few beers just like the adults did when they

hung out in a tavern. The next morning they bought ice-cream sandwiches for breakfast at a nearby grocery store on Norwood Road called Eunice's, named after the store's owner. Later they went and saw the Paul Newman movie, "Winning."

At one time this building housed Eunice's Grocery. Numerous ice-cream sandwiches were consumed here by my brother Ernie and his friends the morning after drinking Charge beer in cans at their campsite in the woods behind the store.

I was about the same age the first time I became "intoxicated" on an adult beverage. T'was in those very same woods, though a bit closer to the house. The Huntington brewery had long since closed its doors before my taste buds were ready for the joys of beer so we had to drink whatever was available (panther piss). I'd had my first real beer a couple of years prior and one or two more before that warm Saturday afternoon when Kevin Conn, John Pasko, Mitch Wagoner, and me had an older friend get us a case of Miller High-Life 7-ounce "pony" bottles. A couple of hours later, Mitch and I stumbled back to his house and we couldn't stop laughing so it took us twice the normal time to get there; and when we we did I seem to remember eating huge bowls of Apple Jacks cereal. - J.S