I Found It

So I have to post it. This passage will make so much more since of you read the post below first. So read "ZAPPED! by Cel-Ray" first and then come back and read this passage from Cannery Row

While he ate his sandwich and sipped his beer, a bit of conversation came back to him. Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, "You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milk shake." It was a simple piece of foolery, but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn't let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn't forget it. He finished his sandwich and paid Herman. He purposely didn't look at the milk shake machine lined up against the back wall. If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn't known--they might call the police.

-Cannery Row, chapter 17

Good stuff. It's worth digging up a copy and reading the whole chapter (actually the whole, short book). He does indeed end up ordering a beer milk shake in some small town.