The root beer incident

By way of introduction to the root beer incident, I offer the following from another of my ruminations, Unheralded Stalwarts, from November of 2009:

“In 1953, when I was about 10 years old, we were a young family living in LaVerkin, Utah, a farming community of about 150 people. We had little money (my father was a schoolteacher/farmer) but I look back on that time as one of the best of my young life. I roamed the hills and orchards with my great friend, Leon Duncan; we had no television, no video games, no IPODs, no cell phones (we did have a 4-party line phone), and the movies were 5 miles away in Hurricane in a small building with a pot-bellied stove for heat. I had no idea that I was deprived of the finer things in life, and indeed, I was not.”


One of the things I do feel deprived of in the many years since I left LaVerkin is my dad’s homemade root beer. We scoured the roadsides (dad let my sister and me run alongside the car) for discarded soda pop bottles. They were easy to find: orange, root beer, grape, cream soda, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and others found their way into the car. When dad decided we had enough, we went home and dad made root beer with root beer syrup, water, and yeast (a little mild fermentation) for the fizz. Dad had a bottle capper, and new bottle caps could be bought for recapping our second-hand bottles. In a few weeks, this process normally yielded a yeasty, sweet concoction best drunk cold to keep the fizz down. In this particular batch, however, dad put a little too much yeast into the root beer.

The root beer was placed in a closet/storeroom next to my bedroom to wait for the yeast to do its job. When, in my impatience, I thought the batch should be about ready to drink, I began to hear popping noises at night in my bedroom. I told mom and dad about it, and dad knew immediately what was wrong. He told me to absolutely stay out of that closet. Some of the bottles that were most tightly capped actually exploded and woke me up from a sound sleep.

When dad finally decided it was safe to enter the closet again, he went in first to find a sticky, gooey mess of root beer and broken glass. It took some time to clean it up.

Such stories of over-yeasted root beer are not uncommon. There was even some concern that the mildly fermented drink would cause unfettered youth to seek stronger drink of the alcoholic variety. I remember seeing men drinking beer at the Mohawk (a small restaurant and store in Virgin, Utah). They often preferred Miller High Life. It was sold in clear bottles and the amber liquid looked enticingly like cream soda to me. I assumed that its taste mimicked one of my favorite sodas, since the farmers and ranchers at the Mohawk liked it so much.

My first chance to get a taste of real beer came one evening in Antioch, California when I was about 14 years old, as I was babysitting our next-door neighbor’s children. They were not LDS, and there were three of four beer cans on the table in front of the couch. There was also cold beer in the refrigerator. I didn’t have the courage to open a fresh one, but as I shook some of the cans on the table, I discovered that they still had some beer in them. After some personal discussion with the adversary (or one of his minions):

“Go on – try it.”
“No. It’s against the Word of Wisdom.”
“So what? One sip won’t kill you. Some of your friends have already tried it. Who’s gonna know?”
“OK. Just one sip.”

I really wanted to know what beer tasted like, so I picked up the fullest can and took a big swig. It was then that I was introduced to the previously-unknown-by-me practice of snuffing out cigarettes in half-empty beer cans. My dad had told me that beer tasted like old mop water. I still have a memory of the taste of the beer/cigarette butt combination – far worse than any mop water I can imagine. I ran into the kitchen, spat the nasty stuff into the sink, and rinsed my mouth out about a hundred times. Cool water never tasted so good.

I tell you about this less-than-sterling episode in my young life to illustrate a point. My dad knew what beer tasted like. He wanted to save me from learning for myself, but sometimes we all have to learn the hard way. Too bad, but it’s true.

I don’t believe that my father’s root beer led me to the brink of disaster. I don’t believe that one small sin necessarily leads to another. I commit small sins every day. I repent every day. One of my favorite people, J. Golden Kimball, said:

“Satan will never get me. I repent too damn fast!”

I do believe that what prevents one small sin from turning into two or a hundred or to larger sin is the principle of repentance.

I repented pretty darn fast after my first mouthful of cigarette-infused beer. I never even told my parents about that incident, although I am sure my dad would have had to go into the other room to prevent me hearing his laughter. The second principle of the gospel is repentance (4th Article of Faith). The atonement provides us the opportunity to repent of the sins we all commit. President (then Elder) Spencer W. Kimball, in October 1967 General Conference, said:

“During World War II, the Brewers' Digest said: ‘One of the finest things that could have happened to the brewing industry was the insistence by high-ranking officers to make beer available at army camps…Here is a chance for brewers to cultivate a taste for beer in millions of young men who will eventually constitute the largest beer-consuming section of our population.’ "

One beer would probably not have accomplished their purpose. But peer pressure, the desire to appear tough and manly, and perhaps even the taste might have done so, over time (a preponderance of small sins).

Better even than repentance is avoidance. President (then Elder) Gordon B. Hinckley said in a speech at BYU in October of 1965:

I am not suggesting that any of you are headed for the slough of alcoholism. But I am suggesting that no young man or woman in this institution can afford to make a decision that involves the drinking of beer or the taking into his or her body of any other substance that will fail to strengthen.

The best way to avoid sin is to plan in advance what our response will be when we are confronted with the opportunity (and the adversary will certainly give us the opportunity). Elder Robert L. Backman, in the October 1989 General Conference, said:

“…set limits to your actions—bounds you will not pass—far from the line which separates good from evil. Be prepared for the experiences that lie ahead. Plan in advance how you will face temptations—weigh the consequences, now and forever.” (italics added)

President George Albert Smith’s favorite saying was:

“Stay on the Lord’s side of the line.”

Good advice. But, as in all other things, we choose which side of the line we stand on. We choose the path upward or downward. Making the proper preparation and gaining an understanding of the consequences of our actions is essential to living a life of righteousness during our time here. Lowell L. Bennion, said:

“When we find our values in life, things that are most worthwhile, things of greatest worth to us, then we begin to feel our individuality, our creativity, our freedom, our strength. We begin to get possession of life when we concentrate not on the whole of reality in which we feel insignificant, but when we select certain things we are determined to live for; it seems to me that's when we get hold of life again. I have here just a sentence from Plato that says the same thing: ‘The free individual is one who can direct his energies and labor to purposes of his own choosing.’ I believe that.” (The Best of Lowell L. Bennion: Selected Writings 1928-1988, edited by Eugene England [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1988], 30.)

Perhaps the Savior said it best in John 8:32:

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

The truth of the gospel, as Elder Bennion suggests, gives us “individuality, creativity, freedom and the strength to select certain things we are determined to live for.” When we have the truth, we can avoid sin (as much as any mortal can) and paraphrasing Plato, “direct our energies and labor to purposes of our own choosing.”

So when the root beer in the closet started blowing up, I had a choice. I could choose to listen to my father and stay out of the closet, or I could have lived very dangerously and peeked in (and believe me, I was tempted). If nothing happened, I might have walked in and helped myself to one of those root beers. If I was successful the first time, I might have tried it again, and again. Eventually, I probably would have been inside when a cap popped or when a bottle blew up. Luckily, I chose the better course that time. So set your bounds. Define your responses. And enjoy the freedom from temptation and sin that comes from having selected the right path in advance.