The good ol' beers: Brands once frowned upon are now downed with a swig of nostalgia.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Timothy Finn

KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Bruce Burstert grew up in tiny Bosworth, a hamlet in north-central Missouri. Among his fondest boyhood memories are the weekend trips he'd take to his grandmother's house.

His mother would put him on a passenger train in Bosworth, all alone_"My father worked for the railroad so we knew all the conductors," he said_and he'd ride the rails an hour or so to Marceline, Mo., where his grandmother lived in a house across the street from the rail station.

When he was 5, Bruce was old enough to cross the street by himself to her house, where she'd be waiting for him on her front porch. From there, they'd walk a block or two to the 400 Club, her favorite corner tavern. There, she would treat young Bruce to a plate of fried fish and coleslaw and his own small glass of Schlitz beer.

"That was back in the early `60s," said Burstert, 45. "Things were different then. My family wasn't insanely permissive, but they were comfortable with us having one very small glass of beer. To them it was like the Europeans giving their children a small glass of wine with dinner."

The few gulps of beer he was allowed were enough to "calm" young Bruce to the point where he'd nap in his dining booth while his grandmother hung out with her friends and put away a few more cans of Schlitz, her one-and-only beer.

Late last year, when he first visited Harry's Country Club, a Kansas City bar and home of the $2-a-can "yard beer," Burstert saw his first can of Schlitz in nearly 35 years.