Beer Tasting, Windy Point, and Weather Updates

First off note the new "window" on the right side of the blog, near the top....click on forecast and/or maps and get your weather updated to the minute.  ACCUweather will take you to where you want to be...I especially like the Radar that they provide....usually pretty much up to date, the past 15 minutes or less.  This morning we got hammered by a heavy downpour and plenty of lightning....it has passed through Mercer County as of 10:30am, however more strong storms are on the way...or at least they are predicting same.

With Sam home we are scheduled to umpire a double header tonight on the artificial turf at Montgomery Field...4 more games in the round robin set up are scheduled for tomorrow, with Sam and I slated for the last two on Saturday night.  Those of course are up in the air at this point in time....we have a good chance of storms through tomorrow morning.

Flash Back 45 Years Ago, Windy Point Billiards___

With no game scheduled last night, I drove over to the south side of Grand Lake, to see what my old buddy Nick was doing...still working as a welder in a hot factory, he usually is pretty quiet during the week.  We sat in the garage and sipped a couple of dark beers while discussing the weather(HOT) and the fact that the old Beach Point Billiards had reopened awhile back.  

Now Beach Point Billiards was one of my old stomping grounds back in the mid and late 60s, before I joined the Air Force.  The Jones Boys, Bob and Jerry, and I used to spend many hours playing pool, and later on, drinking beer...It was my first bar type hangout.  

Beach Point at Windy Point no longer looks the same as it did back in 1966, when Hugh Knox, and his wife, opened the place, just on the other side of Montezuma from our house, near the Lake Field Airport.  After sitting idle for a couple of years, it has reopened and the bar and surrounding are pretty nice...hopefully it will make a go.  Live bands, quality beers, as well as the old stand by types, and on Thursdays they have beer tasting....so after downing a couple at Nick's we checked the clock, it was 6pm and time for the Beer Tasting at the old Beach Point Billiards.  We walked in and Roger the owner and his buddy Jim were in charge of German Beer tasting, complete with 5 brews and rating sheets....being a fan of darker beers, especially stouts, German Beer isn't really my type of brew, but I figured, "What the Hell"?, and settled down at the bar and ordered up the 5 4 oz glasses of the five beers on the menu.

Already have had a couple of dark beers at Nick's, I'm not sure how my ratings were in line with what I really would have liked to say...but, even though I am a novice at this type of beer tasting, I enjoyed the experience, and sitting in this place of my high school days, brought back many memories.

Windy Point, just down the road a half mile, was probably the main beach on Grand Lake of my youth.  We moved to Montezuma when I was a Freshman at Celina High, in the fall of 1963, and it remained my home for almost 5 years, before heading off to the military in the summer of 1968.  By the time I returned from Vietnam in the summer of 70, mom and dad have moved into Celina.  But I still spent plenty of leave time on the south side of the Lake, including the bars there, and Windy Point.  As I said, I truly hope the new version of Beach Point makes a go of it...and he keeps his Beer Tasting Thursday in tact.  I will stop by when the opportunities present themselves.

Meanwhile the memories sitting there last night were priceless...how fast time goes by and how quick it changes.

back later>>>>

Photos~Beer Tasting, rare in this neck of the woods, is now alive and well.  Windy Point Park as it looks today, looking out towards Safety Island...with the lake problems, not much going on there.  And me, in the Summer of 1970, sitting on the Dodge Charger at Windy Point State Park