Unity man's bar pays homage to Latrobe's Rolling Rock

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Unity man's bar pays homage to Latrobe's Rolling Rock

Stacey Federoff | Monday, March 23, 2015 2:33 a.m.

Sean Stipp | Trib Total Media

Lorraine and Jim Mickinak of Latrobe pose for portrait among their collection of Rolling Rock memorabilia on March 18, 2015. Even though the brew hasn’t been produced there since 2006, the Mickinaks have continued to collect items and drink the beer.

From the street, the home in Lloydsville looks like any other ranch-style house in the Unity village. Even from the outside, there are only a few signs of the treasure trove of Rolling Rock memorabilia preserved within a converted garage.

Until Jim Mickinak, 70, unlocks the door to the “After Hours” bar to reveal the collection he and wife, Lorraine, have curated for the past 20 years, it's hard to imagine what another collector termed the “No. 1 collection” of Rolling Rock memorabilia.

After he flips on two panels of switches to bring dozens of neon signs, display lights and fountains to life, it's easy to believe.

“I like to show it off,” Jim Mickinak said. “When you have something that nice, if you keep it locked up or inside of a box, (then) sell it. It's ridiculous to keep it.”

In early February, he filled two glass cases at the new Greater Latrobe-Laurel Valley Chamber of Commerce Neighborhood Visitor and Information Center and spent the better part of a day choosing and arranging Rolling Rock items, including a guitar from the Rolling Rock Town Fair music festivals, tap handles, buckets and sports balls, all marked with the beer brand brewed in Latrobe until 2006.

“It's certainly become a high point for people when they walk in the door. Most people make a beeline over to the case,” said David Martin, chamber president. “We were thrilled to have him be a part of it.”

A contractor, Mickinak first wanted to install a bar for friends, family, employees and customers to spend time together during annual Fourth of July parties, expanding from the couple's basement.

About 20 years ago, he started looking for a “gentleman's bar” and found one advertised for sale at the Brownsville Eagles, who chose him as the winning bidder.

At that time, it was covered with carpeting and layers of dirt, but after the 32-foot wooden bar was installed in his converted garage, it started to look like a real hangout. That's when the collecting started.

“I ran into a guy who had some Rolling Rock stuff, and I'm from Latrobe, we drink Rolling Rock,” Mickinak said. “Then I got obsessed.”

Now, everything at the “After Hours” bar is either marked with Rolling Rock, Latrobe or the names of other western Pennsylvania breweries, some of it dating from the late 1800s.

Items cover the 2,178-square-foot garage, ranging from tiny key chains and pins to a huge green Rolling Rock bottle used as advertising on a Jeep. They help tell the story not only of beer in Latrobe and Rolling Rock, but in Western Pennsylvania.

That's not to mention 2,000 square feet of a 4,800-square-foot building where all the duplicates are kept.

Both Jim and Lorraine Mickinak are members of the Latrobe Historical Society, where Lorraine volunteers during open hours inside Latrobe Elementary School, and Jim serves as a board member.

At first, she was skeptical about his collecting, but “I started getting interested in it,” she said. “I like the old things. I don't like the new things, but he wants everything.”

Lorraine Mickinak's own collection takes up one corner of the space, highlighting all things Latrobe — yearbooks and binders full of photographs, a banner from the city's centennial celebration in 1954, poultry association ribbons and a framed list of prices for services from the Latrobe Academy of Medicine.

When the pair goes to auctions or conventions, Jim Mickinak said she now can pick out items with a discerning eye just like his.

With the Mickinaks' collection, even when you look above eye level in the space, there's something with a story, including original artwork for advertisements that were never printed.

“Too much stuff, not enough time,” Lorraine Mickinak said.

Other nooks show off what Jim Mickinak said is every pint glass or stein ever made with the beer's logo on it, every bottle back to 1933, every label from Latrobe back to 1918, every can, every tap handle.

Mickinak's display is set apart from others, partly because of the custom display cases and because of the time and effort he puts into its placement, including how he has had an electrician rig the bar to conceal electrical wires for lights.

Bob Paul of Unity has also been collecting Rolling Rock memorabilia for about 20 years, but said it's “unbelievable” what Mickinaks has amassed.

“I'm just a pimple compared to him,” said Paul, who is a member of two beer-collecting, or “Breweriana,” clubs. Mickinak is a member of five, and he also advertises in the “wanted” section of the classifieds in several local newspapers.

Under a chandelier custom-made by his son using more than 100 green bottles straight from the brewery, Mickinak can spend hours recalling the history of each item and how he came to add it to the collection.

He and his wife have entertained executives of Latrobe Brewing Co. and Labatt Brewing Co. Ltd., which owned the Latrobe plant from 1987 to 2006.

The company even shot a commercial for Rolling Rock there in 1998, even though it never aired.

Sometimes the companies would send over employees to study past advertising for the beer brand best known for its green bottle, horse head and iconic “33”.

“It was like a sanctuary for them,” Jim Mickinak said.

The pair used to open up the “After Hours” bar to friends and family every Saturday night and work behind the bar themselves. Now, as they've gotten older, it's only open about three or four times a year.

They're still there on the Fourth of July, though, ready with the brew formerly made in “the glass-lined tanks of Old Latrobe.”

The pair still drinks Rolling Rock, even though it is now brewed in Newark, N.J., by Anheuser-Busch InBev, a multinational beverage and brewing company headquartered in Leuven, Belgium.

Mickinak said he's cut down, as he needs to watch his weight and carbohydrate intake, but used to drink Rock Light often before it was discontinued.

“I miss it,” he said, but he doesn't have any qualms about the exodus of the brand from Latrobe. “I'm still a major player in collections.”

Stacey Federoff is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-836-6660 or sfederoff@tribweb.com.

Details

Rolling Rock through the years

• 1892 to 1899, Latrobe Brewing Co. — First iteration of the famous local brewery open after beer was first brewed in the region by monks at St. Vincent Archabbey from 1856 to 1898.

• 1899 to 1919, Pittsburgh Brewing Co. — In 1933, after Prohibition, Pittsburgh Brewing sold Latrobe Brewing to Bob Zaffrey and Anthony Tito for $49,000, listed on the original bill of sale in Jim Mickinak's collection. Then, in 1933, Zaffrey relinquished his share of Latrobe Brewing to Tito and his brothers.

• 1933 to 1985, Latrobe Brewing Co. — Owned by the Tito brothers, who renamed their beers Latrobe Pilsner and Old German to the Rolling Rock brand in 1939 and later added the horse and "33" to the bottle.

• 1985 to 1987, Sundor Group — Bought the company for $18 million until it was sold for $34 million to the Canadian Labatt Brewing Co. Ltd., last to brew Rolling Rock in Latrobe.

• 1987 to 2006, Labatt Brewing Co. Ltd. — Owned the brand in Latrobe and visited the Mickinaks' collection often with executives, even putting their picture on a Labatt label that now sits on the "After Hours" wooden bar.

• 2006 to present Anheuser-Busch — Moved Rolling Rock production from Latrobe's brewery, where signs Jim Mickinak now own pointed visitors to the office and company store.

A rare ‘rotator' is a favorite

Among his thousands of items, one of Jim Mickinak's favorite pieces is a prototype advertising light from the 1950s, known as a "rotator," because a waterfall appears to move.

"They were trying to incorporate waterfalls into their advertisement and it didn't work," he said.

A more common Rolling Rock light in the same style features a horse's head and horseshoe.

About two years ago, Mickinak bid for the rare version on the auction website eBay and drove across the state to the Philadelphia area to buy it, he said.

After it was wrapped in a blanket, he said the weather may have caused a tiny crack in the glass.

"I could've died," he said, until he enlisted a friend in the eastern part of Pennsylvania to meticulously repair it, making the trip back and forth to Latrobe, lest he risk more damage during shipping.

Mystery ‘33' and the horse

Mickinak said so many theories about the mystery "33" at the end of what is now deemed the "pledge of quality" on the bottles exist, such as the number of steps at the brewery or number of ingredients in the beer.

He subscribes to one told to him by an "old-timer" at the brewery in Latrobe: a union artist put his badge number at the bottom of the original work to be printed on the bottle in the lower righthand corner.

The printer thought the placement was a mistake, so the "33" was moved to the center of the label.

"It was a mistake," Mickinak said. "That was the most logical one I've heard."

The horse head prominent on the bottles and in advertising, comes from the 7-ounce "pony" bottles that used a full-standing horse.

Mickinak said shortly after the Tito brothers changed the beer's name to Rolling Rock in the 1930s, White Horse whiskey company sued Latrobe Brewing, which then switched to the horse head.

The name of the beer was never associated with the private country club near Ligonier, he said.

"It had nothing to do with Rolling Rock; (the Tito brothers) weren't even members," Mickinak said.

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