Last Thursday in the Chicago Tribune, veteran reporter Charles Leroux was rhapsodizing about drinking Schlitz beer at the Italian Workmen's Club on Regent Street in Madison.

The occasion was the decision by Schlitz's parent company -- Pabst -- to reintroduce and aggressively market the "classic 1960s formula" of a beer that had lately fallen on hard times.

Leroux, who grew up in Madison, wrote: "In Schlitz's heyday, I drank quite a lot of the archetypal workingman's beer at the Italian Workmen's Club in Madison. ... I was neither Italian nor a workman, but the fathers of my high school friends -- Johnny Quartuccio, Johnnie Angel (his real name), Nick Cuccia -- were. We'd go to the club, order grilled rib-eye sandwiches, and have some fine cross-generational talk with the men who really belonged there. They taught us a card game called euchre for a fee they extracted when, regularly, we lost to them."

Reading about the resurgence of Schlitz, a Twin Cities attorney named Kirk Schnitker said to himself: "Why isn't Hamm's doing something like this?"

To which a dedicated group of true believers around the Midwest would echo: "Amen."

Schnitker is founder and president of The Hamm's Club, a group of devotees to not just the beer -- which still exists, if barely -- but also the legendary advertising campaigns, featuring the Hamm's bear and a singularly memorable jingle, promoting it.

I am not a club member because 1) I'm cheap, and it costs $25 to join, and 2) like Groucho Marx, I would never join a club that would have someone like me as a member.

But I am an aficionado of both the beer and the advertising. I think Hamm's was the first beer I ever ordered -- just a block or so from the Italian Workmen's Club, as it happens -- in a great old basement pizza place called Pino's at the corner of Regent and Park.

It had a good, clean taste, but it was admittedly a long way from the heavier brews that are all the rage with sophisticated beer drinkers today.

The advertising was unavoidable if you grew up in the Midwest in the 1960s. It was especially big, I seem to remember, on TV during Packers games. The animated bear would dance and the jingle would begin: "From the land of sky blue waters. ... "

It turns out one of the first and most enthusiastic members of The Hamm's Club is a Madison resident. Gary Johannsen, co-owner of Johannsen's Greenhouse, is on the club's board.

"My grandfather had a fishing resort in north-central Minnesota," Johannsen was saying Tuesday, when asked how he got interested in Hamm's beer. Hamm's was first brewed in Minnesota in the 1800s and any resort or bar in either northern Minnesota or Wisconsin was almost required to have an electronic Hamm's sign -- with the sky blue waters flowing into eternity -- on prominent display.

When Johannsen decided to redo his basement as a North Woods bar a decade or so ago, he knew he needed a Hamm's sign. The timing coincided with Schnitker founding his Hamm's club, and now the two are good friends who fish together.

As for the Hamm's collectibles, Johannsen somewhat sheepishly admits: "I went a little over the top. I got hooked on it to the point of obsession."

Johannsen said he has in the neighborhood of 1,000 pieces of Hamm's memorabilia.

"When people come downstairs they say, 'What's the matter with you?'" he said.

Schnitker, the club president, said Hamm's is likely "the single most collected brand" of beer merchandise in the world. His club's first annual meeting 10 years ago drew 1,000 participants.

Schnitker would love to see Hamm's, which is now brewed by Miller, enjoy a resurgence akin to Schlitz, but he's not overly optimistic. One problem is getting a behemoth like Miller to pay attention to one of its smaller brands. The other, more difficult problem is the iconic Hamm's bear itself. While Schnitker got a statue of the bear dedicated in St. Paul three years ago -- after a prolonged battle -- there is concern today that an animated bear would be viewed as marketing to children.

Still, there should be a way. Schnitker said he has a friend who hosts an annual show featuring a huge variety of beer cans from around the world. It gets scant attention compared to Schnitker's Hamm's event.

The president said: "I told him that's because he's hustling beer cans and I'm hustling Hamm's."