A gift from a flood: free beer

The river gives and the river takes away. Sometimes it gives you free beer.

Someone along the Platte River in Nebraska lost a perfectly good beer fridge. So when Kyle Simpson and his friend Gayland Stouffer were surveying the damage on Simpson’s property in Schuyler, Neb., the other day, they encountered the river’s blessing.

“Hey, it’s a refrigerator,” Stouffer shouted, according to Omaha.com. “And it’s full of beer!”

Oh, not just beer. Cold beer, which is a coincidence because earlier in the day, while they were clearing mud, they saw refrigerators floating down the river and wondered whether there was beer in any of them.

There was Bud Light and Busch in the recovered fridge and ice still in the ice maker. So they grabbed a brew, took pictures, and posted them to Facebook.

Brian Healy, whose family has a cabin in Linwood, Neb., recognized the fridge and the beer.

It had survived a house fire in 2007 and the scorch marks were a dead giveaway. So was the beer brand. Everybody in the family drinks Busch except Brian’s dad.

There’s not much use for it now. The cabin, about four miles upstream, was destroyed in the flood.

When things calm down — Simpson is loading up supplies and non-perishables to donate — Simpson says he’ll deliver the fridge back to its owners … minus a couple of beers.