A Day Spent in Salem

Yesterday was (probably) one of the last really nice days of summer; I think it hit 81 degrees. We weren’t going to waste the beautiful day and decided a good old fashioned Sunday Funday was in order. Instead of staying around the house and drinking for free, we went to an Oktoberfest to hear elderly men playing traditional German music and spend $14 to drink beer out of a stein bigger than my head.

We went to Notch Brewery in Salem. We’ve never been to Salem and thought it would be fun to tour the town before the craziness of October hits. Notch has a great little space right on the water w/ an outdoor biergarten we could have spent some time in if all the tables weren’t directly in the sun. Instead we spent a good deal of time in the taproom, trying to find people we could trade steins with. There were a limited number of the cool looking steins for the first 500 people and after that the rest of us got clear glasses that said Notch on them. Looking back in full sobriety, the other mug isn’t the epitome of cool that I thought it to be and I can’t imagine why we were so enamored w/ them. When we weren’t trying to trade up w/ random strangers, we were getting nostalgic about the fact that Notch was as old as our relationship. 

Me: Brent! Notch has been around since 2010! Just like us! 

Brent: drinks his beer

Me: (holding up the coaster) Isn’t that neat?!

Brent: Do you think the food line is any shorter?

After a few rounds we decided to walk around Salem and see some history. We started at the Salem Witch Museum. Reading about the witch trials and seeing some reenactments was incredibly alarming; something wasn’t sitting right, and it wasn’t just the two liters of beer on an empty stomach. I read The Crucible in high school and learned about the trials, but as a teenager, it went in one ear and out the other. Seeing the exhibits in the museum was something else; the fact that 20 innocent people died throughout this was very unsettling. It shows how scary groupthink and mass hysteria can be. 

Salem wasn’t what I had in mind. I was more than a little disappointed that it wasn’t a colonial town w/ living history and reenactments. Granted, I was basing this assumption entirely on the Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode when her school takes a field trip to Salem, but still. Candle makers, butter churners, stocks in the town square, something. 

The town square had an art exhibit that I didn’t really get but insisted I needed my picture with. Brent humored me, and when I looked at the pictures I told him my eyes were closed in all of them and he said that was just my normal drunk face. 

Salem wasn’t exactly what I thought, but it was a nice little New England town. I thought the brewery should have a more cutesy name; you'd think a brewery in Salem would have something historic or witch related, although I can appreciate they’re not trying to make money off of the tragic history like the rest of the town. That’s top notch, guys. Ohhh, now I get it.