Triple Distributors.  acrylic, latex, and enamel on wood.  36x48.  ©Accorsi Studios.

I created this old wood sign on wood as a tribute to my grandfather’s beer distributorship business.  My father Ernie wrote the following description about Triple Distributors.

Triple Distributors  by Ernie Accorsi

My father, Ernie Accorsi, Sr, started Triple Distributors in Hershey, Pa in 1937, just four years after the repeal of prohibition. There had been divided opinion if it was named after the three counties he served: Dauphin, Lebanon and Lancaster, or for the three partners: my dad and two “silent partners”: James DeAngelis, who along with his family owned the DeAngelis Restaurant beginning in 1935, three blocks away, and Stanley Booth.

It was a distributorship that sold by the case only. We had a series of pickup trucks (one at a time), usually Chevrolet but also Ford, all painted green with door identifying the business, always painted by a family friend from nearby Hummelstown , Sig Stroehman. To complete the circle of irony, Sig also painted game balls for the Baltimore Colts of the NFL, of which I later I became General Manager. We made home deliveries in the pickup through Hershey and Hummelstown. We also had a larger Ford “rack truck”, which we used to pick up large amounts of cases directly from some smaller Pennsylvania breweries like Graupners in Harrisburg, Old Reading and from large wholesalers which provided us with name National brands.

Our biggest sellers were Ballentine ($3.25 a case of 24 bottles) and local brands like Horlacher ($2.65 a case) and Rolling Rock ($2.35) for the “pony bottles”. The “premium brands” at that time were Budweiser, Schlitz, Miller’s and Pabst. They sold for $4.35 a case for cans.

My father sold the business in 1964.