My Beer is Rheingold the Dry Beer

I voted for this woman in 1959.

 A just off the presses NYT obit tells us: 

Robbin Bain, Pageant Winner and 'Today Girl' Is Dead at 87
After winning the annual Miss Rheingold beauty contest, in which millions voted, she covered fashion for the popular morning show.

I was only 10 at the time, didn't yet drink beer, but with the help of a local grocer and a friend we stuffed the Miss Rheingold ballot box with tens of ballots, maybe hundreds, no doubt for Miss Bain, but also for all the other contestants, which I think were 8 in total.

In the 50s and 60s Rheingold beer held an annual Miss Rheingold beauty contest. Contestant pictures were displayed in your local grocer (there weren't many super markets then). Hung across the store were the photos of the girls in kind of a pennant. The voting was done from a pad of square red and white (Rheingold colors, naturally) entries, about 3"x3," with each contestants name and a check off box.

You marked your favorite and put it in a cardboard box. Maybe you were supposed to have only one ballot per customer, but since we kids didn't drink beer and we were in love with the photos, the grocer let us have pads of the ballots and we were allowed to mark off as many as we wanted.

Miss Bain looked like my Sunday school teacher, who I was in love with. All the contestants had a fresh, well-scrubbed look with engaging smiles. No boobs and legs hanging out on Page Six-like photo spreads. These were girls you could take home to meet mom. 

I can still remember the grocer's store, Bill Nagy's, just across the street from the Flushing home, a crowded space with a huge walk in refrigerator that Bill retrieved the cold beer bottles from and carried it to the counter in his apron folds. My mother was a constant customer, but not for Rheingold. She preferred Rupert Knickerbocker, and for some reason always bought 8.

A kids we bought hostess cupcakes, coconut covered snowballs, and those cream filled small chocolate cakes, with the white swirl on top, always two in a package. Mission cream soda was my favorite. It's amazing I kept my teeth.

New York City brewed a lot of beer. Rupert Knickerbocker, Rheingold and Schaeffer. It was always about the water and that once upon a time New York City had manufacturing industries that made things.

Thinking about those ballots and the sub-heading claim that "millions voted" I now wonder if anyone really counted the ballots, or some committee just sampled the sacks of ballots and declared a winner.. I'll never know.

Turns out Miss Bain was born in Flushing, just like me. Born in 1936 she would have been a wholesome 23 when she was elected Miss Rheingold. As a beauty pageant winner she got money and made promotional appearance for Rheingold. I remember being in Manhattan's Chinatown for a Chinese New Year's parade and there was Miss Rheingold in a convertible waving to the crowd, complete with sash telling everyone who she was.

Miss Bain basically achieved a career in modeling, commercials and was a Today Show Girl for a brief stint before having to leave due to pregnancy (that wouldn't happen today).

I don't remember how long the contest ran before it was discontinued. Bill Nagy's grocery store closed, and of course we all got older. Rheingold was a very popular beer. I saw their red and white empty cans  everywhere the teenagers drank.

I don't remember seeing empty bottles. There was a 2¢ deposit on bottles then (maybe not cans) and as kids we were always looking for empty Coke and other soda bottles to redeem. Large quart Coke bottles ones went for 5¢

The Rheingold font was evocative of Teutonic lettering. Advertising was everywhere, with an ear worm jingle that claimed : "My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer" to the melody of a light waltz, "The Students Waltz": Estudiantina Valse, Opus 191, No. 4 by Paul Lancome, but made popular in a rollicking two piano arrangement by Emile Walteufel who famously wrote The Skater's Waltz. 

I only ever knew of the jingle's classical music origin when I heard the Students Waltz played as part of a Sirius classical music selection. I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard the Rheingold jingle as classical music. (Alan Sherman's Hello Mudder, Hello Fahter sleep away camp message to home is set to a classical music piece as well. Who knew?)

I never knew beer could be so educational.

htp://www.onofframp.blogspot.com