Breaking Out Of Beerport: A memoir

The Story The story begins in the early 1930s in a place called Bridgeport—a dirt-poor coal mining, steel mill town that more than earned its nickname Beerport. Little more than a smudge on the map of Ohio, this was a place that one could be happy to say they were from, only because they no longer lived there. Yet, almost mysteriously, very few people ever left. It was like a Bermuda Triangle on the Ohio/West Virginia border, except it was your future that disappeared. How does a sickly boy born into this time and place—in the midst of the Great Depression - even get the idea, let alone the courage to escape Beerport? What stirs the soul to venture beyond the familiar? From whence stems the fortitude to peek over the fence and dream of a life that no one you know can confirm even exists? It can happen and Breaking Out of Beerport provides pages of testimony. It is the early life, the memoir, the adventures, of the author, Al Scheid. Al describes growing up in a culture that scorned education, as sons followed fathers into dead-end laboring jobs. He developed attitude problems in high school and was a poor student, nearly flunking out. He might have been named “most unlikely to succeed,” except that most of his fellow students deserved the same title. On top of all that, he was also a loner, prone to fits of anger often leading to fights. A rocky family life contributed to his personal problems. He had one saving grace. He developed an unusual habit that was not appreciated in his environs. He loved to read; a local newspaper at first, and then books. He devoured books of all kinds, but especially classic adventure novels. This reading took him into the world of men with the courage to face life and win—men very different than those surrounding him. A wise teacher encouraged and guided his reading, which reinforced his urge to escape the life he saw around him. But he still lived in Beerport after all, and there were things there you couldn’t learn by reading books. This was no place for a bookworm. Lucky for him, there were convenient places for real-life education in his town. Al learned to hustle pool for money; he phoned betting numbers and ran errands for local racketeers. Making a few dollars any way he could manage dominated his life. A relentless and deep first-love romance kept him whirling in this maelstrom. Through all of this, he learned to read people; size them up; win them over, and how to close the deal. There was little chance he would achieve higher education, but he graduated summa cum laude from the College of Street Smarts. A sudden, major setback caused him to rethink his future and hitchhike out of town. The love of his life remained loyal but didn’t follow him. His is the story of an intriguing journey that will take you from this town, through the military, all the way to the gold coast of California and beyond. There are stops along the way that defy connect-the-dots logic and the love affair that wouldn’t die. The rest of the book is about the unexpected events that led to a master’s degree from Harvard University. The saga will keep your interest late into the night. More than a memoir, Breaking Out of Beerport reads like a novel. It is a lesson in history, a primer in psychology, and a study of culture as it explores self-realization in a time before this new-age term became fashionable. The story is not just about another poor boy that overcame adversity and achieves success - it is much more. There are frequent twists and turns, as unexpected events shape a young man’s twenty-seven year journey to a goal. At the end the reader is left hoping for a sequel.