Where I grew up there used to be a bar called the “Foggy Goggle”. It was not the most ‘upscale’ of places but it did a good business and seemed to attract those that were in the mood for a cold beer or several. I can only imagine where they came up with the name.
On this Monday in May, my goggles were foggy…but not because I had been at the bar! We had ventured to capture the story of Harpoon Brewery in Windsor VT. They had been donating beer to our friends at Silo Distillery to make hand sanitizer and had something else up their sleeve.
Though we are no rookies in the beer or brewery realm, (check out Crafting Beer Films) we were new to the Covid world of restrictions. Let’s face it, we all were!
Donned with sanitizer, gloves, masks … and … now protective eye wear, we headed in to see the bottling line to get some shots from a distance. No sooner had we stepped into that familiar world did an unfamiliar phenomenon happen … foggy goggles! We started filming & because we wanted to keep on breathing … we did … but it resulted in continuous blind, foggy moments. Yup, it’s super hard to keep your eyewear clear when wearing a mask!
There was a lot of ‘granny’ eyewear, at the tip of our noses moments and hoping that we were in focus. I have no idea how the brewers could see anything, but they soldiered on … safety first!
Slow and steady, it took a bit to get the shots that we needed but when we were ready to head back to the van, we were gifted with the freshest beer ever … right off the bottling line!!! (not a bad payment for this labor of love)
Once we were back safe in “Dodgey” the van, we removed our gloves, masks and eyewear…did a round of sanitizing and stared at the beer. I fired up the old gal and thought “I better get us home before we find out what the foggy goggle really meant”!
words by Wendy E. Reynolds
