Carbonated Dad, aka Soda Pop
Yesterday I participated in a Lunch Outing. My boss saw a segment on Food TV's "Unwrapped" about a store in our area that sells all manner of sodas, old and new, strange and mundane, virtually all in bottles. Gasp! Not just bottles, glass bottles. This I had to see for myself.
It was pretty slick. The store was what I expected for the most part - many aisles of drinks, most of which I had never heard of. Check their web site for some idea of what they've got - if it's on their page, I saw a bottle of it on the shelf. I have never seen so many varieties of root beer in my life. And ginger beer, and birch beer, and sarsparilla, and cream soda, and on and on. (Sadly, no Fizzy Lifting Drinks were available.)
Anyway, I did avail myself of the opportunity to purchase two six-packs of Crush - one orange and one grape. (I was never much for the strawberry. Too sweet. I know, that doesn't make a lot of sense.) When I was a kid we would have ice cream floats made with various flavors of Crush. When I saw those bottles I could practically taste one - especially those last few gulps - you know, when the ice cream has all melted and you're left with a creamy semi-fizzy drink. Yum.
The bottles are now safely ensconced in the pantry at home, awaiting the arrival of vanilla ice cream. I can hardly wait to share an Orange Crush float with Claire and Cameron.
There's more to the store than that, however. They also have an impressive selection of beer. The domestic stuff is pretty well represented, although California microbrews are better represented than some - not surprising, I suppose. But they also have an amazing selection of European beers, especially German. It took every ounce of restraint in my body to not stock up on Spaten Optimator, Celebrator Doppelbock, and the only true dark wheat beers (dunkel weizen) that I have ever seen in real life. Now I know where they are, though, and I will return.
(While tracking down those links I discovered proof that beer is good for you! Does it surprise you that a brewery would say such things?)
But back to the soda - I was thinking about why there was any allure to drinking soda from a glass bottle on the way to work today. (I have plenty of time for such idle thought during the daily commute.) I couldn't really put my finger on anything other than plain old nostalgia, and that nostalgia then led me to a story I hadn't thought about in a long time.
When I was five or six we went on a family trip to Michigan. At some point we stayed in one of those little roadside inns for a few days - well, not an inn exactly - I seem to recall it was a lot of little cottages. At some point during our stay I was playing on the grounds with a little girl who was also staying there. I don't really remember much about her except that she seemed to be a little older, and she knew Lots of Things.
Anyway, at some point we were in front of the soda machine - and she let me in on a Great Secret. We were going to get rich!
All we had to do to make our fortune was put an upside-down bottle cap - there were plenty laying around on the ground - in the change slot of the soda machine. She informed me that the bottle cap would silently catch all the change coming out of the machine! The unsuspecting soda purchaser, having heard nothing, would assume they had not gotten any change. We could then come by later and reap these rewards for ourselves!
I'm sure you can figure out how this one ends. We clearly underestimated not only people's hearing and math skills, but also the obsessive behavior most people exhibit towards coin slots.
