Randy & Some Spanish Sailors

Way back in 1981, I believe it was, I left a baseball game early at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium one evening. As I walked up W. 3rd Street, a group of about ten guys came over to me. One guy asked me a question in broken English, a question I no longer recall. Anyway, I asked the guys where they were from, and the spokesman answered, "Spain." He explained their ship was docked  right by the stadium at the Port of Cleveland and that they were out to see a little of the town before heading back to the ship. Well four or five of the guys decided to go along with me, while the others chose to return to the ship. I took them to a few places and they had a good time and when the time came for them to get back to their ship, they asked me to come along. Maybe I was daring, I don't know, but I accepted, although I thought, "Randy, you're going to end up at a bullfight in Barcelona." These guys were great. They gave me some type of Spanish melon and some Spanish cheese, and what else but some Spanish beer, the word for which is "cerveza" (see Word History), since they taught me the word that night. It was a great experience. They all were very friendly and one guy they teased a little, because he was from Basque country in Spain, up in the north of the country, on the border with France, in the region of the Pyrenees Mountains. All of these years later, I still think of these guys on occasion.    

WORD HISTORY:
Cerveza-This word for "beer" goes back to Indo European "krhem," which had the notion of "heating liquids." This gave its Old Celtic offspring "kormi," meaning, "heated or brewed liquid." Borrowed by Latin from some form of Celtic, where it had come to mean, "beer" (Welsh and Irish had such forms). In Latin it was "cervisia/cervesia," and meant, "beer." In Spanish, a Latin-based language, it was "cerveza," and North American English has essentially borrowed the word, as there are imported brands of beer from Spanish speaking countries, especially Mexico.