I love a good story. Especially when it involves beer. When it also involves a classic car, I’m all in. This story speaks to the mysterious way people’s paths sometimes cross, often unknowingly. It also speaks to the way beer helps build community.
“You just never know what you will find out over a beer,” says Mike Hudspeth, owner at Four Generals Brewing in Renton. He recently shared a cool story with me about one of the brewery’s regular customers and a cool old car.
“Heather Maddox is a long-time customer,” explained Mike. “When she first came into the brewery three years ago she was chatting with wife Mary, who is an owner and manager at Four Generals Brewing. Over the course of the conversation, they found a curious connection.”
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At this point, things get a little serendipitous and slightly circuitous, so follow along closely.
Here’s what they discovered over the course of that conversation. Heather’s husband’s grandfather, Dewey Anstett, had given Mike and Mary’s son a car. Dewey gifted Ross a 1968 Chrysler Newport as a way to thank Ross for his help with another car. Ross, who is now the head brewer at Four Generals, previously worked at an auto parts store.
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Father and son (Mike and Ross) brought the car back to life and it ended up being Ross’s daily driver for many years. He even took it on his honeymoon. That’s the car pictured above.
One night the car mysteriously lost electric power and had to be rescued from the side of the freeway. They later discovered that the mysterious freeway breakdown happened on the night Dewey Anstett died.
Spooky, yeah? Not just the part about the car breaking down on that night, but that the Green Newport is somehow a link between these people, these lives, and this brewery.
Renton, Washington is not exactly a small town, but people who live there might tell you otherwise. Over a beer or two, in towns like Renton everywhere, people often discover that they are more closely connected than they might have ever imagined. I’ve always thought Renton was a cool community, one that still seems to have some soul in the often soulless, every-expanding Seattle metroplex. This story proves it.
Click here to see the spot that King 5 Evening Magazine recently did about Renton, featuring both Four General Brewing and Heather Maddox, that regular customer we talked about at the beginning of the story.
