By Alec Woolsey - Herald-Zeitung
A recent addition to the Wurstfest grounds can’t be found by the typical attendee. Locked away from the masses is a locker in the Opa-exclusive room.
This isn’t a normal combination locker, though. No, it’s built in the style of old iron work with small keyed padlock and houses something unique — steins.
Around the Wurstfest grounds, Opas will mix and mingle while accompanied by their personal steins. Steins are unique mugs to help beer keep its temperature, but each one usually comes with a story, according to Jeff Jenkins, a kleine Opa.
He says over the years he has accumulated nearly 50 different steins, each one with a history to go along with it.
“Wustfest issues one each year and then I had some family when I was growing up that lived in Germany that brought me a bunch of steins,” Jenkins said. “I’ve visited Germany four different times and every time I’m there I always end up bringing one or two home.”
His personal favorite? A personalized stein with his family crest and name hand-painted on the side, which he keeps stored in the locker in the Wurstfest locker.
“The one that’s the neatest, I have a very similar one to Marc [Allen] where when when I did some research on the crest for Jenkins, and then the same artist that painted Marc’s, we ordered some steins from Germany and they hand-painted the crest on there.” he said. “That’s the one I keep at Wurstfest most of the time because I think it’s unique and it’s hand-painted.”
He and Marc Allen, an Opa, were instrumental in getting the locker, also known as the Maßkrugtresor, built and installed at Wurstfest for the Opas to use.
As Allen tells it, he was on a 10-year anniversary trip with his wife in Germany when a stranger joined them at the table after walking over to a wall of lockers and pulling his personal stein out.
“The tradition of that stein locker, [I learned as] I was talking to that man that sat at our table back in 2006, is that that specific locker belongs to him and his family,” Allen said. “And his specific stein was something that was passed down to him. I think that he was like the third or fourth generation to own that particular stein. So we are talking about a stein that was well over 100 years old. And they put their initials and marks on there to represent who they are.”
The stein lockers are a grid of iron-work with small doors the size of a steins that can be locked with a key.
Allen said the man he spoke with had the rights to those locker spaces his family had, and they would stay with the family until they let them go.
“They pay this annual fee and that’s their locker and it’s something that they can pass down through generations,” he said.
After introducing the idea of the locker to several other Wurstfest member years later on a trip to Germany, including his father, Allen said the idea started to gain traction but was shelved until 2015.
“About two years ago, when Tim Zipp was becoming the incoming president, we were talking again about this idea of doing this locker,” he said. “At that point, he kind of assigned me to take over control on getting it done.“
He and Jenkins said they were instrumental in getting the 100-stein locker built and installed, which was opened up to Opas to use.
For Allen, the locker was important because of the intimate relationship he said a stein holds with its owner.
“I think it goes both ways, but most of the time the stein chooses you,” he said. “It’s not like I walked up and said, ‘Hey, that’s my crest on the stein.’ All the other steins I had, they kind of chose me. It’s just like, that’s a cool stein I would like to have. It represents the story of my life as far as time I was over in Sandberg or Munich or Salzburg or wherever it was that I picked up the stein.”
As for his favorite stein, he says it’s his family crest, which was hand-painted by his sister.
“There’s always a story or something significant behind each person’s stein,” Jenkins said. “That’s what makes it kind of neat. It’s unique to the individual.”