A few years back, PBR started showing up in yuppie bars, right next to India pale ales and rich stouts. It suddenly became cool and hip and fashionable to drink what was once considered anything but cool and hip and fashionable. It was, um, Pabst.

JACIE LANDEROS / Union-Tribune

Now this trend of downing the beer our fathers drank – after cutting the grass while wearing black socks and loafers – is actually growing.

Schlitz, once the best-selling beer in America, is being reintroduced in some markets – not San Diego yet – and is apparently flying off the shelves in some stores. The old advertising slogan, “Go for the Gusto,” has even been dusted off.

Schlitz? What's next, Schaefer?

Or, from my hometown of Baltimore, the land of pleasant living, National Bohemian beer? Back home, the boys call it “Natty Boh.”

Go O's! Bring back the Colts!

Oops, got a little homesick there. But not homesick enough to have a Natty Boh, which recently earned this rave on the Web site BeerAdvocate.com: “This was probably one of the most disappointing beers I have ever drank.”

What's with this growing love affair with old-time, no-frills beer, particularly at a time when so many craft beers and imports are available?

Greg Koch doesn't get it.

“Back in the day, people drank this because they had no better choices,” said Koch, who runs Stone Brewing Co., a craft brewer based in Escondido. “There was a period of time when a frozen dinner was considered an advancement. That sends chills up my back.”

It's sort of like General Motors reintroducing the Corvair, which Ralph Nader – before becoming a perennial presidential candidate – attacked in his book “Unsafe at Any Speed.”

Or the Chargers bringing back Ryan Leaf.

The Pabst thing was arguably kind of cool, given that young people were actually rebelling against something, even if their targets were mass-marketed or pretentious beer brands and not, say, the Iraq war.

But Schlitz?

I'm no beer snob, believe me. It's just that drinking this stuff reminds me of 1977, when I drank to forget . . . my acne problem.

But for some, the beer brings back memories of better, simpler times, when blue-collar cities were in their glory with belching factories, good-paying jobs, winning baseball teams and local breweries.

Many of these old-time beers are owned by the same company, the Pabst Brewing Co., based in Illinois. It got lucky with Pabst, a brand long in decline until some kids in Portland started drinking it because it was cheap and not mass-marketed.

Kaboom! A trend started. Sales of Pabst jumped more than 60 percent from 2001 to 2006.

Schlitz had been long gone, doomed by labor strife and a change in formula. Today, it's being brewed in its original formula, even if Pabst doesn't actually brew it. It has no breweries. It contracts out the work to Miller.

I felt I was missing out on a trend by not at least trying some of this old-time beer. So after another tough day at the office, I stopped on the way home and got a 24-ounce can of Pabst.

First, I cut the grass – in loafers and black socks, of course.

Then my wife – wearing a dress, pearls, high heels and an apron – greeted me with the cold PBR.

Then I watched “Father Knows Best” as my wife cooked dinner.

Yes, I get it now. Who wouldn't want those days back?

Michael Stetz: (619) 293-1720; michael.stetz@uniontrib.com