Fishing on the Genesee 1 and1/2

If you were a son or daughter of a WW2 veteran who lived in Rochester, it's likley that your first beer was a Genesee. The beer was brewed downtown.

My late friend Kevin's veteran father got a job at the Genesse Brewery right after the war. Kevin's father died early. When Kevin was working his way through colllege, he got hired by the brewery to load trucks in the night shift.

It was hard, manual labor but the pay was good. The fringe benefit was beer. Beer, fresh, cold Genny flowed through the water taps at all times. Kevin told me about this fringe benefit and invited me to share in it. If we were still drinking when the bars closed down, we could come up to the brewery and drink and bullshit to our hearts content.

One pre-determined night, when Al and I were still thirsty and the bars were closing, I took Kev up on his offer.

We arrived at the brewery at the designated spot. Kev met us and led us to the beer faucets. He gave us each a cup. My God, it was true. Endless, ice cold Genny beer.

We were drinking for about a half hour when the first cops arrived.

Oh shit, this was too good to be true.We were gonn get busted.

The cops were younger guys, not much older than Al and me. They took off their hats. They walked over to the beer tap. They poured themselves some beer. Pretty soon there were twelve people gathered in the brewery....8 cops and four non-cops. 

They wanted to know how we got there and how we got in. I explained about the invitation from my friend and that we had walked to the brewery from downtown and Kev was gonna give us a lift home.

They all knew Kev.

Everything was cool

The atmosphere was very relaxed. I listened to cops tell cop stories for a few hours while Kev finished his shift. Kev gave us a lift home.

I heard about a lot of weird shit goin' on by the river that didn't make the newspaper.

Over the rest of that summer we became semi-regulars at the brewery. We were part of the gang. 

Twenty years later dead bodies began to pile up on the Genesee.

I was no longer living in the city.

I tried to imagine what the off duty cops were talking about when they partook at the Brewery as the murders mounted and the city started wondering what tthe hell the cops were doing?