For me I’d say in Boston. I learned how to drink hard liquor, wine, and the like in a variety of places, but Boston is where I truly learned to appreciate beer. For my grandmother, it was Idaho.
One day (when she wasn’t busy driving her grandmother to Mexico city), she took a train from Cleveland, OH to Los Angeles to inspect her brother’s girlfriend. He was in the military at the time, and my grandmother, the only girl amongst the siblings, was deemed the best choice to go find him. In Utah she wound up at a hotel by herself, wondering what she should do to pass the time until the next leg of her journey. As she had “learned how to drink beer in Idaho,” she went to a store and picked up a bottle of beer and brought it back to the hotel. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a bottle opener. A young soldier asked her what her room number was. After hearing the response, he told her that every room had a bottle opener in the bathroom. Later that evening, the young man gave her a call to see if she was able to open her beer and asked if she needed assistance. Terrified at the fact that she had needlessly told a stranger her room number, she positioned a chair under the door handle and prayed that no one would come knocking at the door. She had every reason to worry. My Grandma was a fox.
She stills remembers the days of Prohibition when a soldier came to their door with a large amount of booze.
She now enjoys a beer every Tuesday night after she and her friends go to their computer lessons at the Apple Store. She is 85 years old.
My other grandmother is not much of a beer drinker. She’ll have a shandy every once and again, but she refuses to be caught dead buying liquor by one of her fellow churchgoers or neighbors.
While other people may not like old people, either because they drive slowly or can often be cranky and bitter, I find delight in seeing my grandmother smile as she recalls a journey from her twenties. It can be hard to imagine her as ever being young as I have only ever known her with short white hair. But the clarity with which she tells the story about finding a bottle opener, shows that the woman who so frequently threatened to beat my cousins with a yardstick for running on the neighbor’s roof, was also once free and daring. She is more than just a mother, widow, and grandmother, she is also Elaine.
My tip for the day is: Go find out where your grandmother first learned to drink beer.
If not beer, then what else has she done? You may have to hear some “subtle racism”* or listen to how the world is ending first, but you might wind up learning something your parents don’t even know. Elderly people may also startle you with the things they say.
For instance, my great Uncle Norm (who is 88), is a bachelor living in Cleveland. He happens to be well affiliated with the arts and a keen traveler. Calling him stubborn is a great understatement.** He prides in his garden and has a wide variety of flowers and trees in his back yard. He often quizzes me on their names in the same manner a kid I used to babysit quizzed me on Pokémon character names. A few of the tallest flowers in his yard happen to be poppies, not the little red kind, but the large pink kind, like the ones in Afghanistan. 
He explained that someone had informed the police that he was growing illegal plants in his yard. His answer was that once you’ve planted them, there is no way to remove them. You can dig them up, but they will always come back. With that, the police assumed he wouldn’t be manufacturing opium, and left him alone. Uncle Norm continued by saying that on a trip to China he had urged his tour guide to take him to an opium den. When the guide hesitated, Uncle Norm declared that he would not pay him unless they visited one. Reluctantly, the guide took him to one where he could observe several Chinese men smoking. Of course, he did not partake in the activity as only the Chinese were allowed to smoke opium at the time (or so says Uncle Norm). Other people would come into the den to make money by massaging the smokers for an additional sensation. On a side note, Uncle Norm will also invite you to “the Club” for breakfast, which happens to be a Big Boy.
*By “Subtle Racism” I mean racism that elderly people find acceptable. This includes terms such as “white heaven,” “cinnamon colored skin,” and “integrated neighborhoods.” My grandmother related a story about previous Indian neighbors who never cut their lawn, “Well, according to another neighbor, they didn’t need to cut their lawn in India as the elephants would eat the grass.”
**Uncle Norm does not do well with rules. No “Wait Here Until Seated” sign can deter him from claiming his favorite table at a restaurant. If a museum is closing and there is an exhibit he wants to see, he will find a way in. If you had plans that day, you will change them in order to accompany Uncle Norm to the museum.
