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nspired
ideas rarely emanate from the bottle, though artists and writers sometimes seek
them there. But if you brew and bottle beer, inspiration can be an important
part of the mix. Just what moved the stockholders of the former Consumers Brewing
Company to alter the corporate name to "Harvard Brewing Company" in 1898 is
a matter of speculation, but it was an inspired change. With a 10-label product
line, including "Present Use Porter" and "$1000 Pure Beer Crimson Label," the
Lowell, Massachusetts, brewery became one of New England's largest in the pre-Prohibition
era.
The company's checkered history is far too convoluted to recount here. The final chapter began at the start of World War II, when the brewery was seized by the feds because the Von Opels, then the owners of record, were classified as enemy aliens. The government held the company until 1956, when it was sold to a Miami real-estate outfit for $800,000. It was then resold to a New York brewery, which dismantled it. Harvard Beer went down the drain, but not forever. This year the proprietors of the Lowell Brewing Company, which has been making Mill City Beer since 1994, re-registered the trade name and re-introduced Harvard Beer as "a regional macro-brew." "Here's one Harvard we can all get into," jested the Boston Globe in an item reporting that the Lowell Brewing Company had "dropped 40,000 cases of the crimson-clad, pale lager on the greater Boston area just in time for graduation parties....[The label] promises to attract plenty of attention from brand identification with a large university in Cambridge." The item ended with a quip from Alex Huppé, Harvard's director of public affairs: "It's going to have to have a pretty good head if it's going to have the name Harvard on it."
 Old
brand name, reborn.Photographs by Stu Rosner |
Others at Harvard were not amused. Deans attempting to deal with the rise of binge drinking among undergraduates did not regard brand identification with a large university in Cambridge as an inspired idea. Hopping mad, they alerted the Trademark Licensing Office, which tries to police the use of the Harvard name, and the General Counsel's Office, which takes transgressors to court. The outcome wasn't settled when the Pump went to press, but it was clear that Commencement caterers would not be dispensing Harvard Lager.
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Dilating on the circular dining-hall trays of yore in the May-June issue, Primus appealed to readers who might help fix the exact date of origin. Help came. Martin Needler '54, now dean of international studies at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, was a dishwasher at the Harvard Union in 1951, when the trays appeared. "They had a protruding rim all around so they fit one on top of another without any special effort," Needler recalls; the old rectangular trays had sections of differing sizes and had to be stacked just so. Caldwell Titcomb '47, of Auburndale, Massachusetts, provides a copy of his letter to the Crimson, dated March 21, 1951. "The long-awaited circular tray has at last arrived in House dining halls," it begins. "Unfortunately, it is utterly inadequate." The young Mr. T. then unloaded a damning critique:
--"The three sizes of compartment around the center make it necessary to plan out ahead all the items desired so that the right size can be tendered for each, and the proper foods placed adjacent to one another to minimize the number of rotations during the eating process.
--"The compartments are too shallow. My salad was placed in one compartment and ended up in three. The potato spewed over into the central milk-glass division, and the gravy required a skilled juggling act to keep it from flowing over the side. Also there was insufficient height in the ridges to aid in getting the last mouthfuls of applesauce on the spoon (the same will certainly hold true for peas, stewed tomatoes, etc.).
--"The tray spins like a Lazy Susan, particularly when one tries to cut 'tenderized steak' (a hard enough job on the old trays), and the gravy then assails the knife-wielder and occasionally his neighbors.
--"It is difficult to pick up the tray, since there is no border or space to wedge the fingers between the tray and the table.
--"The color is not harmonious with the interiors of the dining halls, and the circular shape fights with the predominantly rectangular character of the halls and their furnishings (not to mention Leverett's trapeziform phenomenon).
--"I fear, furthermore, that the new tray may also serve in intramural 'flying saucer' experiments, and perhaps even in postprandial roulette games.
"In an age when 'Functionalism' is the war cry," Titcomb's letter ends, "the circular tray has certainly fallen early on the battlefield. Let us give it a quick burial."
~Primus IV
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