Well, folks, it’s that very special week of the year between Christmas and New Year’s. This is the week when, unless you’re a cop or a healthcare worker or a firefighter (and God bless ya), or you work in retail doing returns (and God help ya), there ain’t sweet-ass shit gettin’ done at work.

 

It’s great, I’m sure: farting in the boss’s office, playing computer games with the sound on, sniffing the chair of that redhead in Marketing, and flying the little remote control blimp you got your kid for Christmas. But remember: a good day at work still sucks compared to a bad day touring breweries, eating your fill of compressed pork products and drinking in backwoods bars.

 

That’s why I always get together with some of my old corporate buddies during this special week and go on “The Hunt” across my little corner of the world, Pennsylvania Dutch country.

 

The whole thing started as a dare towards the end of a company Christmas party amid a flood of vodka shots:

 

“I’ll see you at the morning tour at Yuengling, you drunken bitch!”

 

“You’re on!”

 

To our surprise, we all showed up, miserable and moaning, but game. And so it’s continued for 13 years.

 

We meet in a cold parking lot, share a beer (usually something big and vintage – I’m going with a 1999 Old Howling Bastard from Blue Point Brewing this year) and head up for the 10 a.m. tour at Yuengling (that’s our choice, but any production brewery will do). It puts a kind of “educational” gleam on the day, like we’ve accomplished something.

 

And then it’s time to get down to business. We’ll lay in a base of bellymortar at the Kempton Hotel, where paintings on the ceilings portray Kempton history, the Pageant of American History and The Life of Christ. Just what you want at 11 a.m. – art that you gotta lay your ass down on a barroom floor to appreciate. The real show at the Kempton is either the owner, who has a great supply of the foulest hunting jokes you’ll ever hear, or his daughter, a delicate-looking thing who can cuss a drill sergeant into a blushing, blistered coma.

 

The menu is a killer: stuffed and roasted pig stomach, waffles with chicken gravy, pickled eggs, and hickory nut pie, the soul food of my big, fat German ancestors. We wash it down with icy drafts of Yuengling Premium and maybe have a shot of Rock ‘N’ Rye, the weird, sweet concoction of cheap blended whiskey with candied fruit in the bottle that most of upstate PA uses for cold medicine.

 

The next stop is the Stony Run Hotel, a plain old place with a magnificent mahogany backbar, hand-carved over 100 years ago. They’ve gone a bit upscale here recently with cans of Guinness Draught, but I always get a bottle of cold Schmidt’s and a bowl of rivel soup. Gotta maintain that food buzz.

 

The food buzz is immense at the next place. It’s not a bar, it’s a butcher shop: Dietrich’s Meats in Krumville. They raise and smoke their own meat, and it’s delicious. But they’ve got some weird shit, too. My buddy Tom thinks Dietrich’s motto ought to be “If you can cut it off an animal, we’ll drop it in vinegar.” They have a bizarre assortment of pickled organs in jars. For sale. Chukkar kidneys. Pheasant hearts. Lamb’s tongues. Turkey gizzards. I once read labels on jars for over a minute and never repeated myself. And those lamb tongues come in gallon jugs ... someone really likes them.

 

The food they’ve got for normal people is great, though. They’ve got ropes of “hot stix,” Slim Jim-like things you’d actually want to eat (there’s mild stix for the capsaicin-challenged), some excellent beef jerky, ring bologna (a local take on summer sausage), all shapes and sizes of smoked bologna, and a range of fully smoked birds from Cornish game hens to turkeys. It’s all women behind the counter, and they’re pretty generous with samples. We all buy stuff, and the next half hour in the car is ripping, chewing, stealing and “Did you try this? Awesome!”

 

The next stop is either the Virginville Hotel or Haag’s Hotel in Shartlesville, depending on how hungry we are. If we need filling, Haag’s is the place. They serve a “Pennsylvania hotel dinner” that’s all you can eat: fried chicken, baked ham, roast beef, sausages, potato filling (a weighty mix of mashed potatoes and turkey stuffing), gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans, pot pie, dried corn, baked beans, pickled red beets, pepper cabbage, pickles, apple sauce, tapioca pudding, stewed apricots, sugar cookies, cottage cheese, apple butter, home-baked pies (including the PA Dutch shoo-fly pie), apple tart and ice cream. If you don’t throw up at least once, you’re just not trying.

 

Virginville is more sane but still filling, with their locally famous roast beef sandwiches with horseradish and banana peppers. Virginville is a classic PA hotel bar: bar on one side (that smells like the cakes in the urinals), dining room on the other side (that smells like ham, usually) and the Grange Hall out back. Belly up – more Yuengling!

 

Now it’s time for – well, it would be time for a nap, after all that chow, but we keep going. It might be the Grand Central Tap Room in Fleetwood (Booksie’s, to the locals) for sardine and cheese plates; maybe the Bauers Hotel for more Yuengling and hot pepper balls (don’t ask, whatever you do); maybe the Pricetown Hotel to knock back spearmint schnapps and check out the latest big-hair, honky-tonk hottie behind the bar; or maybe the Yellow House Hotel (in Yellow House, PA) for a bit more sophisticated Yuengling consumption.

 

Sometimes we go into Reading after that – the town John Updike appropriately called "Brewer" in his Rabbit books. Reading is a beer-basted German town, and there’s bars aplenty. After we’ve done our damage there, it’s time for dinner; it has probably been two hours since we had anything to eat.

 

I think you’ve got the idea. It’s all about blowing off work; after all, it’s not like you’re doing anything anyway. Get a designated driver to be safe – I only drink at every other place, and consume plenty of water and coffee otherwise, but I’m a professional. Don’t try this at home.

 

Get out on the road, or walk if you’re in the city. Try some new places – you never know what you’ll find. Talk to locals; they’ll tell you what’s good. It won’t all be good, and sometimes it can be downright disgusting. But most places are pretty cool, and I guarantee you this: the view from a barstool beats the view in your cubicle any day.

 

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