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Although countless volumes have been written about the life of Pope John Paul II, I am not aware of any biography that mentions his papal visit to the site of the first cocktail party ever given. As was recently reported in The Wall Street Journal, “Credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) for the first ‘cocktail party’ ever thrown can be assigned to Mrs. Julius S. Walsh, Jr. of St. Louis.” Mrs. Walsh hosted this historic event in May of 1917 in her home at 4510 Lindell. In 1924 the house was sold to the Archdiocese of St. Louis and has served as the official residence of the Archbishop ever since. When Pope John Paul visited St. Louis in January of 1999 he stayed in the house as a guest of Archbishop Justin Rigali.
Julius S. Walsh, Jr. was a cousin of Edward J. Walsh, Jr., who married my mother’s sister Katherine in 1937. In 1917 my Uncle Eddie was still a young boy living on Westminster Place, a few blocks north of the famous party venue. His family lived in the same block as Henry and Charlotte Eliot, the parents of Thomas Stearns Eliot, another great author from St. Louis named Tom. Thirty-two years later, in 1949, Eliot wrote a play called The Cocktail Party, which may have been inspired in part by the memorable gathering in his old neighborhood.
In 1948, the year I was born, T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in Literature. That same year, Thomas Lanier Williams III (better known as Tennessee and yet another great author from St. Louis named Tom) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s extremely unlikely that I will ever win a Nobel or Pulitzer Prize for anything. That having been said, I did win a literary honor that neither Eliot nor Williams ever received. The Riverfront Times recently recognized my book, A New Religion in Mecca, as the “Best Book by a Local Author” for 2007.
I’m not the only person at the brewery who has received recognition lately. Paul Jensen, who has been with us since before we opened in 1991 and is our longest continuously serving employee, was recently recognized as a “Hospitality Hero” by the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. This award came as no surprise to any of Paul’s colleagues at the company or to any of his many loyal customers. A lot of us have known for quite some time how  special he is. But it was nice to see him recognized in the community at large…and way overdue.
It’s not just individuals who have been getting positive publicity. Once again Sauce Magazine has recognized Schlafly as the “Best Local Brewery” in St. Louis. This is an honor for which a lot of people apart from me deserve a lot of credit.
In the interest of balance, it’s worth reporting that not everything people say about the brewery or me is all that nice. For example, an angry listener (AL) to KWMU, a local affiliate of National Public Radio, recently sent an e-mail to the station in which she called me a WEALTHY WHITE MALE LAWYER [bad word] and said no one had ever insulted her as much as I had on the air. The AL used capital letters for all of her description of me apart from the bad word that the editor of The Growler won’t let me use in this column.
It seems I had infuriated the AL by saying on the air that people who listen to KWMU should help pay for the station, just as people who ride Metrolink should pay for the service. The AL said quite indignantly that her parents used to contribute to another NPR station, presumably relieving her of any obligation to help pay for the station to which she was currently listening. She also said that she and her husband were both in graduate school at Washington University and couldn’t be expected to contribute to the radio station.
The AL’s message raised a couple questions in my mind. First, if a Washington University education is worth more than $35,000 per year, as it must be or otherwise she and her husband wouldn’t be enrolled there, is what she learns from public radio really not worth $75 per year (20 cents per day), that being the level at which she indignantly refused to contribute and said she couldn’t afford? More interestingly, are WEALTHY WHITE MALES really the only people who can afford to donate $75 per year (20 cents per day)? If so, I definitely need to rethink my notion of what it takes to be rich or super rich.
Fortunately, not all of the AL’s fellow students at Washington University are so quick to denounce me as a WEALTHY WHITE MALE [bad word]. According to the October issue of Playboy, which named Schlafly Beer as one of “Playboy’s Top 10 College-Town Microbreweries,” our “imperial stout is a strong favorite come exam time at Washington University.” The article also says, “It may brew in the shadow of the big dog (Anheuser-Busch), but Schlafly is no schnauzer when it comes to full-bodied beers.”
You read that correctly. Our beers were described by Playboy as FULL-BODIED (in this case the capital letters favored by the AL are appropriate). Considering the rest of its editorial content, I’m not sure what higher encomium the magazine could bestow. Had we been around in 1917, I’m sure Mrs. Walsh would have served Schlafly at her cocktail party.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’ve been to The Tap Room, odds are you know who Paul Jensen is. The only charter member of the Schlafly “family” with uninterrupted service, Paul has been holding forth and serving fine Schlafly Beer at the south bar since, oh, December 26, 1991 (our opening day!). We love him and apparently so does everyone else! As Tom mentioned in his column, Paul was recently the recipient of a St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission Hospitality Hero Award. No surprise to us. If you don’t know Paul, you might want to stop in and be WOWed. And have a pint while you’re at it…
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