The Vokouns of Chicagoland

"Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." - Garrison Keillor I love Prairie Home Companion on NPR and the news from Lake Wobegon. Since the Louis Vokoun family has strong Minnesota roots, I think it appropriate to review Minnesotan stereotypes . The most important of which (in my mind, anyhow) are: 1) they are exceedingly nice, 2) they hate the movie Fargo which dismays me since it along with Lake Wobegon serves as my cultural reference to the state ,  and 3) their diet consists primarily of 'hot dish' which I fondly remember from my own Minnesotan grandmother and can best be described as an entire meal's ingredients thrown into a 9x12 pan and baked for exactly one hour. They also have quite an affinity for cute, burrowing rodents but then nobody is perfect. Louis John Vokoun was born on January 31st 1862. His mother Anne Bechyne would die 9 months later. He was the fourth child and third to live to ad...

 We are Bohemians. Pilsner is Our Beer. This is a prologue to the Louis Vokoun's story. In English, it's beer. It Czech it's pivo . Pivo is a national heritage which is probably why the Czech Republic has the highest beer consumption per capita in the world. Do you question this? It turns out that the Kirin Beer Company runs the Kirin Beer University. The fact that such an institute of higher learning exists is, well, amazing. It publishes lists of beer production and consumption (no doubt put out by doctoral students studying for their PhD in Beer ;-) Anyhow, here is the 2017 list per the Kirin Beer University. Not only is the Czech Republic number one but it had held the title for 25 consecutive years! When it comes to beer consumption, Czech's are basically both the New York Yankees and the Alabama Crimson Tide. Based on those numbers, I'm betting we keep the title for a long, long time. Perhaps we Czechs’ greatest claim to fame is that we invented the world’s o...