Beer here

Ronnie Crocker, one of my beer-drinking friends from Texas, has started a beer blog for the Houston Chronicle. He and I worked together at the Bryan-College Station Eagle many eons ago.

There are many Ronnie Crocker stories, mostly drawn from the late mad rush for a couple of pitchers of beer at the Chicken Oil, which closed a half-hour after the paper's final deadline. A high degree of both editing and drinking efficiency was mandatory.

But one of my favorite stories was when he was a young, and short, reporter for the Eagle and I was a prematurely grizzled assistant city editor. He had a late-breaking story that I had to trim to make fit, and he complained mightily.

I tried to soothe him. "You'll never even notice the difference," I said.

"Hey," he said, "when you're my height, every inch counts."