All Posts – Page 44 – I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

Our Parents’ Favorite Restaurants

One of the most sacred rituals that I recall from my childhood was that of getting into the car and driving, sometimes over an hour, to a favorite restaurant. The delicious saturated-fat laden food was a particular delight to my parents, who could remember the very lean times of the Great Depression.

So perhaps once a month, we would pile into the Plymouth and head for locations like Chicken Annie’s, or Wilder’s, or the AQ Chicken House.

All three of these fine eateries are still around, I’m happy to say. Perhaps they have altered their menus to provide more health-conscious options, perhaps not. But they are still plugging away, providing unique cuisine that flies in the face of the plethora of generic chains that have become a part of our lives. And Boomers, that should make you smile. After all, if I can quickly come up with three examples of local eateries that have survived since the 60’s, I’ll bet you can too.

Now I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with chains like Applebee’s, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, or Shogun. Indeed, there is much to love about the sameness and predictability of the franchise restaurant, especially when you are on the road and hungry.

But the unique eating places of our youth were very much savored by our parents, who faithfully returned again and again, sometimes driving an hour or more to get there. After all, they found out by trial and error that they were worth visiting. Perhaps the grapevine at work or at the beauty shop revealed that there was a place in Springdale, Arkansas, accessible only by narrow, curvy Arkansas roads, that served the best fried chicken this side of Alabama.

At any rate, our parents loved their favorite restaurants. And we kids loved it when they would take us along. This was a special treat for me, because it was much more common for them to leave me home on Saturday nights in the care of my older brother while they headed off to Joplin, thirty miles away, to feast at Wilder’s.

I also recall nice-looking eating spots that my parents avoided like the plague. Why was that? Was the food questionable? Was the staff less than pleasant? Was the atmosphere wrong?

Postcard adverting the A.Q. Chicken House

I doubt that the latter was the case, because many of the often-visited places featured undecorated white walls, or ugly faded art prints of cowboy scenes, or water-stained ceilings. Clearly, chic ambiance was NOT the thing that drew my parents back again and again..

I recall pulling into the AQ Chicken House driveway about 1967 and seeing a dilapidated-looking building, with old barn wood everywhere. But there was also hardly a place to park. My parents would feast on the chicken, but my favorite was the batter-dipped french fries. Oh, the decadent delight!

Chicken Annie’s was another humble-looking spot, a half-hour drive from home. Sitting out in the middle of nowhere, it too drew a crowd of commuters who couldn’t care less about atmosphere, and who found its food too good to resist.

Wilder’s in Joplin was founded in the year that the stock market crashed, and has managed to survive lots of economic ups and downs since then. Sadly, such was not the case with Mickey Mantle’s Steakhouse (although the late Mick still has his name on a trendy New York eatery) and Rafters, which featured a huge fire-breathing dragon sign. I was completely spellbound as that neon-lit beast would spew out flames from its mouth every minute or so, illuminating the black Joplin Saturday night and burning itself indelibly into the memory banks of a rapt seven-year-old.

How about you? What favorite eating spots of your childhood are still around? Here’s hoping you can still visit your own personal equivalent of Chicken Annie’s, Wilder’s, or the AQ Chicken House.

Mr. Coffee

We grew up listening to the early morning gurgling sounds of the percolator. Even though we were probably too young to enjoy its taste, the coffee smell and the calming sound made for great kitchen ambiance.

But all of that changed in 1972.

That year, Vincent Marotta released his invention for sale to the general public: Mr. Coffee.

With the help of one of baseball’s greatest players, it revolutionized the way we prepared the essential get-going beverage. Within a few short years, the percolator was nearly extinct.

Our parents drank percolated coffee and were used to it, but the percolation process has issues.

The same water is continuously pumped over the grounds over and over. This is simply not good coffee making form. Plus, the brewed coffee is subjected to 212 degree heat, and that’s bad for flavor. However, it did make for one catchy TV commercial!

Marotta knew that Joe DiMaggio was a noted coffee drinker. But he was also pretty reclusive. Joltin’ Joe had gotten all of the fame that he wanted playing baseball and from his short marriage to Marilyn Monroe. In 1972, he was enjoying retired life in San Francisco.

This NPR interview gives the details on how Joe was convinced to become the spokesman for Mr. Coffee. Basically, it took Marotta tracking down his phone number, then flying from Cleveland to the west coast the next day. The relationship between DiMaggio and Mr. Coffee lasted nearly 15 years.

In researching this piece, I was surprised to learn that coffee filters were not sold until 1975. I assume that a perforated basket was used on models prior to then. Personally, I prefer a mesh basket anyway. It lets just a bit of sediment through, a delicious enhancement to taste.

By the end of the decade, practically every kitchen in America had a Mr. Coffee or one of its imitators. The percolator was hopelessly old-fashioned. Vince Marotta and Joe Dimaggio had managed to change the way we drank coffee.

Nowadays, the percolator is enjoying a bit of a nostalgic comeback. Of course, it never fell out of favor with sportsmen and campers, as you could make coffee on a campfire, no electricity required. The classic percolator requires a coarser size grind, not so easy to find any more.

But give me my Mr. Coffee-brewed morning start to my day. I can’t imagine penning a column without it.

Mmm, Mmm, Good!

I grew up in a two-income household long before it was fashionable. My father owned a truck garage in Miami, Oklahoma, and my mom was a first-grade teacher. That meant times were busy around my house, and a kid frequently was expected to fend for himself, lunch-wise.

No problem. The good folks at Campbell’s Soup took care of that. A good-faith estimate is that I have eaten 3,744 cans of Campbell’s Soup over the years. That’s averaging about a can and a half per week. If anything, that figure is low. In fact, in my cubicle at work, I have four cans of Chunky stashed away (along with fat-free saltines, of course, more on that later) for those days when I really don’t want to go out and blow ten bucks on lunch.

Making Campbell’s vegetable soup (my childhood favorite, LOVED those alphabet characters!) was a snap for a seven-year-old. Just open the can, mix up a can of water, and heat until just hot enough. Mmm, mmm, good!

Campbell’s Soup got its start back in 1894. A man named John Dorrance was hired by his uncle, the company president (then Anderson & Campbell Preserve Company), for a salary of $7.50 a week. While that may have been good pay for a laborer, Dorrance had a chemistry degree from MIT and a Ph.D. from the University of Gottengen in Germany. But he took the meager wages in order to work for his uncle.

It turned out to be a very good move for the Campbell’s company.

Canned soup was very popular in Europe, as the younger Dorrance was aware. And it was inexpensive to manufacture. However, it was mostly water, and therefore expensive to ship. So Dorrance set to work to see about removing some of that weight. He eventually developed a technique to remove half of the water, lightening the canned soup’s weight considerable, and making its preparation a simple matter of pouring the can into a pan and adding one more can of water.

Suddenly, sales of soup to Americans was feasible. And as Campbell’s began marketing it, sales skyrocketed. At ten cents a can, consumers loved it. By 1922 Campbell’s added the word “Soup” to their name. And hopefully, Dorrance received lots of very nice raises.

So kids of many generations grew up with the tasty stuff. By the Jet Age, parents on the go loved quick, easy lunches that their kids willingly devoured. And tons of TV and magazine advertising ensured that every cupboard in America was supplied with a generous amount of Campbell’s Vegetable, Chicken Noodle, and Tomato Soups. At least ours was.

Pop artist extraordinaire Andy Warhol saw that Campbell’s Soup had become a part of American culture, so he began producing paintings that incorporated it. And they, like campbell’s Soup itself, were also huge sellers.

Campbell’s Soup was simply something that I never got tired of. As I grew older, I learned to spice it up a bit. A little hot sauce goes a long way towards waking up subtle flavors in chicken noodle and tomato soup. And a pinch of curry powder is great in the chicken noodle variety as well.

Then there are the crackers. I’m a cracker smasher, I’m a bit abashed to say. My idea of a perfect serving of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef is to heat it to near boiling, then pour it in a bowl big enough for the entire amount (or simply eat it out of the pot if I’m sitting in front of my home computer) and crush an entire sleeve of fat-free Premium Saltines into the hot mixture, then stir to form a cracker/soup colloid, of sorts.

Strange, I know, but you know what? It’s mmm, mmm, good!

McDonald’s Comes to Town

Nowadays, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a McDonald’s. There’s probably not a town in America with 5000 or more residents that doesn’t have one.

But they were much less commonplace when we grew up. You might have had to drive a hundred miles to find one.

The original McDonald’s drive-ins were easy to recognize. They had those amazing Golden Arches that you could spot a mile away. And they also proudly proclaimed how many hamburgers they had foisted upon the hungry public to that point.

Maybe you remember the scene from Woody Allen’s classic flick Sleeper, when he awoke in the future and saw a McDonald’s that stated that it had sold 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hamburgers.

Anyhow, McDonald’s did some serious expansion under Ray Kroc, who bought the chain of four southern California restaurants from brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in 1954.

By 1977, they finally made it to nearby Rogers, Arkansas. I must have eaten a couple hundred Quarter Pounders there as a teenager.

The oldest McDonald’s is in Downey, California. It opened in 1953, and I am proud to say that I have eaten there.

It was a real trip back in time to sit at the outdoor table and stare at those beautiful arches. The restaurant was locked in time, with the original sign, decorations, and everything (except the prices).

But the franchise had changed by the 70’s, then an indoor eating facility. I rarely go there nowadays, having adopted a low-fat diet which in direct contrast with the McDonald’s menu. But I have fond memories of when the big yellow M finally showed up in my neighborhood.

Malt-O-Meal and Cream of Wheat

I was a funny kid. I didn’t eat much.

Though I was ravenous about candy, it wasn’t unusual for me to barely touch my breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

It was a constant worry for my mother, who was assured by wise Dr. Wendleton to not worry, he’ll eat when he’s hungry.

One of the treats that would wake up my taste buds was a steaming bowl of Malt-O-Meal, complete with milk and, of course, sugar. I also enjoyed Cream of Wheat, and honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two competitors.

Malt-O-Meal got its start in 1919. That year, the Campbell Cereal Company was founded by by John Campbell, a miller in Owatonna, Minnesota. He invented a hot breakfast cereal which consisted of a combination of malted and farina wheat. He called it Malt-O-Meal. Campbell intended to compete with Cream of Wheat, which had gotten its start in the 1890’s.

Malt-O-Meal was a hit. It sold competitively alongside Cream of Wheat, and both brands did a brisk business.

And, as I mentioned before, whichever one my mom served didn’t matter much to me. I assume she bought one brand over another based on current sales prices.

However, I have a softer spot in my heart for Malt-O-Meal. That’s because the company which produces it, officially known as Malt-O-Meal, continues to exist in its privately owned state today, through the Great Depression, 1970’s stagflation, and a recent salmonella recall (every food manufacturer’s worst nightmare).

I too work for a family-owned business, one that has been around since the 1930’s, and I am familiar with the challenges of remaining independent despite economic upheavals. My hat’s off to Malt-O-Meal for surviving.

The aroma of either cereal cooking on a cold winter morning helped drag my sleepy bones out of bed to face another drudgerous day at school. No matter how hungry I was (or wasn’t), I could always make a bowl of the curiously warm-on-the-bottom, cold-on-the-top milk-drenched concoction disappear.

I can’t remember any Malt-O-Meal commercials from my childhood, though there must have been dozens of different ones. I do recall a Cream of Wheat jingle, and one brand or the other made a TV ad about a woman living in International Falls, Minnesota, and how she enticed her kid to go to school in the subzero temperatures by serving him hot cereal.

Cream of Wheat has a spokesman, Rastus the chef, who was once presented in a very politically incorrect manner. The stereotypical figure, common among food manufacturers of the early-to-mid twentieth century, would promote the cereal with Stepin Fetchit type dialog.

As racial equality came to the forefront, Rastus, like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, was either silent, or spoke dignified English. The chef’s name is still Rastus, but only because he was never renamed. His name hasn’t been featured in an advertisement since before most of us were born.

I don’t have time for breakfast any more. I’m out of bed and on the road to work by 4:00 AM. But I did enjoy the sweet aroma of Malt-O-Meal and Cream of Wheat when my wife would prepare it for our kids when they were small. May that aroma always exist somewhere in the world.

Lunchboxes

Man has been eating lunch since time immemorial. And you might think that the portable lunchbox like you carried to school in the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s would have been just as ancient. But you would be wrong.

In 1950, Nashville, TN-based Alladin came up with a concept that they felt just might have potential, especially in light of the fact that the largest generation of six-year-olds in history were about to enter school for the first time: a metal box/vacuum bottle combination just the right size for a kid to carry his/her lunch to school in. And seeing how metal lasted forever, and a steady supply of new customers was needed in order to do future business, what if they put a TV character’s image on the box and bottle? That way, new TV shows would create demand for new lunch boxes!

I couldn’t find any names connected with that idea, but rest assured, even Don Draper has never possessed that kind of genius.

Those original Hopalong Cassidy lunchboxes were an immediate smash success, and a tradition was born for not just Boomers, but all kids of the 20th century: a perfect-sized case that a kid would proudly lug to school and back, festooned with colorful pictures.

The metal lunch box for kids was actually born in 1935, a company called Geuder, Paeschke and Frey creating a lithographed box with Mickey mouse’s image on it. But it took postwar prosperity, TV, and the addition of a Thermos bottle for the concept to become a craze.

OK, not an actual “Thermos” bottle, but that’s what the ubiquitous containers have come to be generically called. In fact, it was Thermos who decided to jump into the lunchbox fray in 1953 with their own Roy Rogers version. And it, too, was a staggering success, the kid-sized lunchbox kit increasing the company’s overall sales revenue by 20% that year.

The companies didn’t waste any time getting more TV and movie characters onto the store shelves. And more manufacturers jumped into the lucrative market. By the late 50’s, there were ten or so different brands of lunch boxes. One of these was Ohio Art, who used lunchbox profits to develop a new toy: the Etch-a-Sketch. I am astounded to realize that I have not yet written a piece on the artistic toy, stand by for that one.

It was brilliance beyond brilliance. Besides filling a utilititarian need, new TV shows came out every fall, so there would be a continuing demand for more and more lunchboxes. Life was good.

The thing is that they were built to last forever. The quality of the metal kept getting better and better. By 1962, designs were embossed onto the boxes, replacing the flat graphics. The Thermos bottles didn’t fare so well, though. The first thing to go was the plastic cap, frequently left on the table in the cafeteria. Next, the bottle itself would fall victim to gravity, and dropping a loaded box might cause the bottle’s glass liner to shatter. However, the box itself would soldier on, eventually being sold at a yard sale, or perhaps being tossed into an attic, to be rediscovered and put on eBay in the next century

An alternative to the rectangular models came along a bit later. It mimicked the classic lunchboxes that our fathers lugged to work twenty years earlier. The kid’s model originated, once again, with Aladdin, in 1957. It was expensive paying for the rights to use TV and movie characters, so Alladin decided to make miniature versions of the blue-collar’s model, decorated with more generic (and cheaper) graphics. A Disney schoolbus model was the single largest-selling lunchbox of all time, some nine million units! Other dome-tops bore the likenesses of VW buses. Additionally, many were decorated with pirates, spaceships, cowboys, and other inexpensive kid magnets.

Lunchboxes reigned supreme throughout the 60’s. The glass vacuum bottle was replaced during that decade with a plastic foam-insulated version that was more durable. But that was the last plastic improvement.

As the 70’s started rolling along, overprotective mothers became concerned that their kids were carrying potential weapons to school. Lawsuits began to be filed, wussy legislators jumped on the bandwagon of the dangers of evil metal, and the manufacturers began feeling the heat. Starting in 1972, plastic and vinyl lunchboxes became the norm, and they were, in a word, crap.

The plastic would fade and crack, the vinyl would tear, but oh, how lucky we were to be protected from that vile steel. The popularity of the school lunchbox began to fade.

Alladin continued to make a limited amount of metal boxes, the last one celebrating Rambo in 1985. In 1998, they got out of the lunchbox business altogether. Thermos continues to make them, though, even metal ones! However, they must be careful marketing them, because obviously, one of the most horrible hazards a kid can face is being plunked in the head by a fellow student possessing that most heinous weapon of mass destruction, the metal lunch box.

Jiffy Pop

“Jiffy Pop, Jiffy Pop, the magic treat! As much fun to make as it is to eat!”

We kids of the 60’s were serenaded by that chorus several times each Saturday morning as we watched our favorite cartoon shows. We were shown images of happy kids popping Jiffy Pop on a stove with that amazing bubble of aluminum foil rising expectantly until, finally, it was torn open and the most delicious looking popcorn the world has ever seen was revealed.

The next time we would accompany our mothers to the grocery store, we would beg for Jiffy Pop.

My frugal, practical father wouldn’t allow it. He would point out that you could get a whole bag of popcorn for less than one single Jiffy Pop. But, mom would relent occasionally, and I would be allowed to create my own magical aluminum bubble full of popcorn.

Jiffy Pop was invented in 1958 by Fred Mennen. For five years he worked to create a self-contained system which would be perfect for popping a special yellow hulless hybrid corn which grew near his home in La Porte, Indiana. The next year, he began marketing it, and by 1960 it was being sold nationally.

TV commercials helped its popularity spread like wildfire, as those millions of Boomer kids begged their parents to buy them the popcorn that’s as much fun to make as it is to eat.

Jiffy Pop is still around, but its sales are way down from its peak years. It’s manufactured by ConAgra foods, along with a whole slew of other products.

Here’s hoping it’s not phased out by the megacorporation that produces it. We’ve lost enough connections with our childhoods. In the meantime, the next time you’re in the supermarket, you might pick up a Jiffy Pop and see if it takes you back about forty or so years.

Jell-o

“J E L L O!” the letters, sung to a rising scale, were a frequent childhood memory for me from TV commercials. Indeed, we were big Jell-O fans in the Enderland house in the 60’s.

Mom loved it because it was inexpensive and simple to make. Dad loved it because it was easy for a dentures-wearer to consume. And I loved it because of that chewy, rubbery layer that would form at the bottom of the casserole tray that mom would typically pour the hot mixture into before popping it into the fridge, or icebox as we called it back then.

Of course, it would always be cherry Jell-O, with banana slices added. I must have eaten two or three hundred pounds of the stuff as I grew up in the 60’s.

Another variant that mom would create was orange Jell-O with a can of fruit cocktail thrown in. Good stuff.

We inhaled lots of the sweet gelatinous substance despite rumors going around school as to its source: cow hooves.

I would roll my eyes at such allegations. How could something so sweet and irresistible come from such a disgusting source? I mean, sure, we had heard that Elmer’s glue was a product of horse hooves, but that only made sense. After all, it was not something you would eat (although a kid or two in grade school did try it, as I recall). But delicious Jell-O must surely have originated from a formula with nothing more sinister than lots of sugar, syrup and the like.

Jell-O first appeared in 1895, when a fellow who manufactured patent medicine who had the rather unlikely name of Pearl B. Wait purchased the patent for the gelatinous dessert from industrialist Peter Cooper. Wait and his wife didn’t have much luck selling Jell-O, so they sold the rights to entrepreneur and high school dropout Frank Woodward.

Woodward was within inches of selling the rights to the poor-selling product to his plant superintendent for 35 bucks when the product suddenly took off.

The Jell-o salad: the weirdest thing you could make with the stuff

Sales rose steadily, as Jell-O became viewed as a sophisticated dessert for the beautiful people. Eventually, the company that made Jell-O became food mega giant General Foods.

By the 70’s, Bill Cosby became a spokesman for Jell-O products and kept that position for thirty years.

Other gelatin manufacturers would try to compete with Jell-O, but the only one that I remember was called Mr, Wiggles or something like that. Jell-O has managed to thoroughly dominate a market without having its extremely familiar brand name (99% of Americans are familiar with it) turn into a generic term, as happened with Aspirin, for example.

You either loved or hated the rubbery layer that would form at the bottom of the container. My wife couldn’t stand it. I thought it was the creme de la creme. Oh well, she won’t eat raw oysters either.

Of course, nowadays we know that gelatin does indeed come from repellent sources, including cowhides, pig skin, and bones. But, we simply put it out of our minds as we enjoy a parfait, a Jell-O shot, or simply a casserole full of the cherry-flavored variant with banana slices thrown in for good measure, just like mom used to make.

Great Shakes

Keith Mcelmurry, if you’re still out there, this one’s for you.

“Any place can be a soda fountain now, with Great Shakes, yeah Great Shakes!”

Not only was this a great commercial jingle, it was sung by some serious rock and roll stars of the 60’s. At least three movers and shakers were persuaded by Great Shakes, manufacured by General Foods, to perform their jingle in the style that would define the signature of each artist: Dusty Springfield, The Who, and The Yardbirds.

Over the years, mega-corporations like Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, and Coca-Cola have managed to pony up enough bucks to get popular music stars to hawk their wares.

But Great Shakes just happened to tap into some of the greatest talent of the 1960’s for their ads. And they weren’t singing some garbage crafted by some no-talent PR guy. The Great Shakes jingle still rings true through my brain even though it hasn’t appeared on television in at least 35 years.

The aforementioned Keith Mcelmurray and myself had a discussion circa 1976 concerning this song. We were both youngsters working in a grocery store, and we we agreed that the Great Shakes jingle was a classic tune that should somehow be immortalized and given its due.

Well, neither one of us foresaw things like computers in each home, the internet, or the digitizing of music. But nowadays, you can either listen to or purchase online the original jingles by the aforementioned trio of talented artists by shrewd search engine usage.

Believe it or not, I don’t ever recall making a Great Shake. Perhaps that’s why they aren’t around anymore. While I loved the commercials, the product itself just didn’t ring my bell.

You took powder, poured it into an included cup, added milk, sealed it with its included lid, and shook it until it turned into a shake “so thick it stands up to a straw.” Some of my friends bragged about it, but I never got around to trying it.

Too bad. Unlike its immortal jingle, Great Shakes disappeared from the scene a long time ago.

Gone, But not Forgotten, Soda Pop

The carbonated soft drink industry has been largely consolidated into two big players: Coca-Cola and Pepsi. These two brands have absorbed most of the competition, either continuing to market brands like Dr. Pepper and 7Up, or merely letting other brands disappear. Royal Crown continues to battle gamely, a distant third place contender.

But when we grew up, there was a veritable cornucopia of brands of soda. I would stand in front of Moonwink Grocery’s chest-type pop machine for several minutes trying to make up my mind as to which beverage to spend my dime on.

My favorite back in the 60’s was Grapette. “Thirsty or not!” Grapette was started in Camden, Arkansas in 1939. It became a national seller by the 1950’s. I remember it had a really cool bottle with a recessed band around the middle. Grapette was absorbed by rival Nu-Grape in the 70’s and disappeared. It’s back now as Sam’s Grapette in Wal-Mart stores. The flavor is supposed to be the same, but I guarantee you it’s not in those cool bottles any more.

Speaking of Nu-Grape, it too was an option. Founded in Atlanta in 1921, it too disappeared in the recessions of the 70’s But you can still obtain it somehow, along with many of the other brands I mention in this piece, at http://www.retrosoda.com/.

Nehi started in 1924. It became so popular that its producers, the Chero-Cola/Union Bottle Works, officially changed their name to the Nehi Corporation. In 1955, they changed their name again to Royal Crown Cola. You could find all sorts of flavors of Nehi all over the country. Radar’s favorite was grape, as you know. While RC Cola can still be found everywhere, albeit in an obscure corner of the soft drink section of the supermarket, I haven’t seen Nehi since the 70’s.

Some disappeared brands were made by the Big Boys. Fanta was Coca-Cola’s answer to Nehi, coming in various flavors. Coke’s Sprite has survived to our day, Pepsi’s Teem has not. Coke also made a diet drink called Like, and another vanished brand called Simba in the 70’s.

Speaking of Pepsi, when Mountain Dew was introduced by them in 1965, it was marketed as a hillbilly drink. “It’ll tickle yor innards!” was its claim. A rival soon arose, Kickapoo Joy Juice, produced by Monarch Beverages, which still exists. Kickapoo was named after a potent concoction that moonshiners brewed up in the Li’l Abner comic strip. They still make the citrus soda, but only market it overseas. Monarch also produced Bubble Up, Dad’s Root Beer, and Moxie, which continues to have a huge NE US following, but which never made it down to Oklahoma.

Another long-gone brand was Whistle, produced by the Vess company. “Thirsty? Just whistle!”

Orange Crush tasted like, well DUH! It achieved tremendous popularity in 1978 when the perennial weakling Denver Broncos made it all the way to the Super Bowl before remembering their weak nature and getting clobbered. I preferred Strawberry Crush myself.

Grapefruit sodas have long been popular. I really loved Squirt. It had a bonzer bottle with a twist in the middle. Canada Dry also made a rival, Wink. Fresca was great, too, before the 1969 ban on cyclamates. That ban nearly drove RC Cola out of business, because the public quit buying its huge generator of revenue, Diet-Rite. RC added a little sugar to make the nasty saccharine taste more palatable, but the public preferred the now-vile-tasting Diet Pepsi and Tab with their zero calories. Tab tried adding a bit of sugar, too, at first, and marketed it with a very politically incorrect “Tab tastes good enough for guys!” Yeesh.

The soft drink concept lost a lot of its charm when returnable bottles were discontinued. In fact, look for an upcoming article on that very subject. In the meantime, imagine you’re eight years old, and you have finally made a decision. A frosty cold Mission orange soda is about to withdrawn form the chest, as soon as you maneuver it down the rails towards that coin-operated opening.