My father, for most of his life, operated a printing press. He also moonlighted as a de facto pitchman for Anhueser-Busch. The same way some men wear cufflinks, my dad, you could say, wore a Budweiser. When I think of him, I don’t see his face, but rather a can of Bud in his kung-fu grip.

Of the things my father passed onto me nothing has given me greater pleasure than his love for beer. If it’s truly every parents desire to see their children better off than they, my father should be pleased that by the time I reached legal drinking age, the proliferation of microbreweries was in full-tilt. My generation, unlike his, wasn’t limited to cheap domestic swill or imports with fancy names.

In short, barley malts cemented our bond, with happy times rising from the muck of fermented hops. That’s not to say there weren’t misunderstandings along the way. Once when I was very young, I guzzled my father’s beer as he used the restroom. When he returned, he smelled my breath, spanked my butt and sent me to my room. But as kids usually do, I had the last laugh. Years later he would entice me to visit him with offerings of beer.

My dad, a tall, broad man, drank more Budweiser than most dads. The evidence was abundantly clear each Sunday when, as part of my regular chores, I spent the better part of an evening crushing a mountain of beer cans, with my dad tossing a few more onto the heap before I completed the task. Each Monday as I sat in class, I could smell the spatter of stale beer wafting up from my sneakers.

My dad’s love for Budweiser was surpassed only by his love for the Chicago Cubs. When I was 10, he took me Wrigley Field. He purchased a T-shirt from a street vendor depicting the late Cubs announcer Harry Carey standing next to the big-block-letter tagline: Cub Fan, Bud Man. That summer, my father wore the short proudly, if not daily.

I, too, wanted membership in this elite club of men. Unfortunately, I was too young to guzzle Buds and not quite old enough to swear at the television when my team lost. But I did manage to eke out the small distinction of being the first Cub Fan, Bud Man among my friends.

I asserted this status by wearing the T-shirt to school after pilfering it from the hamper. It was an allegiance as good any, but my father, at the time, disagreed. He grounded me after my teacher called to say my attire was inappropriate for school.

Father’s Day meant that my mother’s right to badger my father about drinking too much Budweiser was temporarily suspended. Those days were usually spent at my grandparent’s house. While we kids splashed around the pool, the Comp women sat around looking bored as the men cooked and watched the Cub game. My dad usually saved a Bud or two for the ride home. Once, after hitting a pothole, he spilled beer all over his lap. After swearing a lot, my father, a logical man, explained that was why people shouldn’t drink and drive.

However, it was the time alone with my father that I remember best. Again, Budweiser was often the linchpin of these occasions. For example, going with him to pick wild asparagus or Morel mushrooms meant I sat in the car holding his beer while trespassed on peoples’ property. Fishing was OK, so long as I didn’t have to carry his 12-pack too far. But really, it wasn’t that bad. After hauling my first keg, I realized how lucky I’d been that pops didn’t buy beer by the barrel.

At the end of the day, he was a better drinker than pitchman. Despite my exposure to Budweiser, my father failed to build the kind of brand loyalty Anhueser-Busch would’ve preferred. I like Budweiser, but I don’t love it. I never buy it, and try my best to never drink it. It’s not that I’m better than Bud drinkers or can’t toss back 20 or more. Perhaps it has something to do with me seeing Budweiser not as the beer of champions, but as the backdrop to a cantankerous childhood. Unfortunately, the same is true of the Cubs.

I’m not sure when my dreams of becoming a Cub Fan, Bud Man disappeared or when I drank the first of my father’s beers without getting spanked. I can’t recall the first time we got drunk together, what we did or talked about. I don’t even remember when he seemed to finally understand that an ice-cold beer is reason enough to hang out. We don’t see each other too often, but when we do, we certainly pound back more than a few.

Sometimes I’ll joke that he was a crummy dad, and he’ll say it was my fault for being a crappy kid. We’ll laugh hard belly laughs and smoke cigarettes until our throats hurt. But so long as the bartender is near, all is well in the family.