Monday, March 27, 2006
The Passing of an Era!
The Brown Brothers came to Anchorage at the end of World War II and started two successful enterprises: The Lucky Wishbone and an A&W Root Beer Restaurant. Leon Brown, the founder of the local A&W, recently died. The A&W label everywhere is long past its glory days. Today you can get the Frosty Mug Taste but you can’t get the Frosty Mug. There was many a time that I pulled into an A&W Drive In and ordered one of those mugs with ice clinging to the top edge of the glass. Today you can buy an awful imitation of the mug in Wal-Mart and Target, but what you get is a mug with liquid inside its walls that freezes. It is not even close to the original taste. And the cans of A&W root beer all taste metallic. The other great thing about the original A&W was that you could get an eight-inch basket of curly cue fries for 39 cents. Now a single one of those curly cues when strung out was a good 12 to 18 inches in length and tasted fantastic. Lots of people popped in just for a basket. The machinery to make those curly cues must have disappeared from the face of the earth. Ask for curly fries anywhere these days and all you get is one or two ringlets that don’t have much taste.
One other item that is missing from my early years is Pop-Cola or maybe it was Pop-Kola. It was a poor imitation of the original things, but it cost a lot less and with good reason since the taste was pretty miserable. The little shotgun house that was next to my grammar school served as a local quick shop for elementary kids. Only six to ten kids were permitted inside at a time. Those who had a nickel had to choose between a soft drink and a piece of candy. The drinks were inside a coke box that had a lid that opened upward. The bottles were arranged by brand inside long galvanized slots that ran the length of the box. Only the cap and the neck could be seen. To retrieve a bottle of any kind it was necessary to first slide the bottle down the slot and then make a right turn to guide it to large round hole that would permit you to pull it from its prison. Most of the soft drinks were warm to the touch. And by the time you got inside the store there was usually nothing left but Pop-Colas. That brand, despite all its misgivings, did have one advantage for 7- and 8-year-olds—there was one bottle in every case that had a special marked cap that entitled the finder to free cola. If you dawdled with your unopened cola too long the owner would snatch it from you and open it for you and your bottle cap would disappear before your eyes. Your free cola gone forever. However, the owner made the mistake of dumping all his used bottle caps on the ground in front of his store. The kids who were wise beyond their years, usually the 8-year olds, took to examining all the caps strewn on the ground looking for that elusive magical one. One day I was one of two or three eager students plying through the bottle caps when lo and behold there it was—the bottle cap with the freebie inside. I looked it over very carefully and it was a little rusted on the outside, but the inside still read “free.” I trudged inside with the rusty side down and handed it to the owner—expecting to be evicted any second. But he handed me a free Pop-Cola. For the next week I spent all my recesses looking for a rusty Pop-Cola bottle cap.
As I grew into my teen years I learned about a fascinating teenage ritual. Take 20 cents and buy an R C Cola and a small bag of Tom’s Salted Peanuts. Pour the Peanuts into the Cola and drink. It was and is quite addictive. In our neck of the woods it was pronounced RRRRR OOO CEE. Today Dr. Pepper owns the R C brand. Most people at that time spurned Dr. Pepper calling it prune juice.
The local favorite soft drink was Grapette. It was bottled 30 miles up the road at Camden, Ark. Benjamin Tyndle Fooks had moved to Camden in 1925 and bought a gas station. Soon thereafter the local bottling company went on the market. He had a hankering for something different so he bought the plant. He soon began experimenting with flavors. After experiencing hard times during the Depression, he learned through marketing studies that grape flavors were some of the most popular on the market. But there were none that had that true grape flavor. After two years of experimentation he developed the famous Grapette flavor. When he tried to copyright the name, he found to his dismay that the name had already been taken. He then traveled to Chicago and purchased the trademark for $500. He finally came up with a catchy slogan: “Thirsty or Not.” With the introduction of a lightweight bottle that had only half the glass of an ordinary cola bottle sales took off. Eventually there were 600 bottlers in 38 states. He introduced flavor syrups that were sold in clear glass banks. I had a clown bank myself, but it had one problem—it would not take half dollar coins. That was not usually a problem for me. However, when I did land one of those big denominational coins, I screwed off the top and found it would fit neatly inside the lid. In 1972 Fooks sold the company. It then passed into the hands of the company he feared the most—the Monarch Company, which had its own grape soft drink—Nu-grape. And just as Fooks feared his product passed into oblivion—at least in the United States. It still sells 70 million bottles a year on the international market. In Carson City, Nevada, two years ago I saw small bottles of Grapette, but they were not the real things. It was Nu-Grape in a Grapette bottle. But there is still hope. Wal-Mart signed a deal with Grapette International to sell the original product as a Sam’s Choice product. Just look for the grape soda variety. It is interesting that if you buy the bottle with Grapette on the outside you will not get the real McCoy. But if you buy the can from Wal-Mart without the label you will get the real thing. Now if they will only bring back those real frosty mugs and true curly due fries.
The Brown Brothers came to Anchorage at the end of World War II and started two successful enterprises: The Lucky Wishbone and an A&W Root Beer Restaurant. Leon Brown, the founder of the local A&W, recently died. The A&W label everywhere is long past its glory days. Today you can get the Frosty Mug Taste but you can’t get the Frosty Mug. There was many a time that I pulled into an A&W Drive In and ordered one of those mugs with ice clinging to the top edge of the glass. Today you can buy an awful imitation of the mug in Wal-Mart and Target, but what you get is a mug with liquid inside its walls that freezes. It is not even close to the original taste. And the cans of A&W root beer all taste metallic. The other great thing about the original A&W was that you could get an eight-inch basket of curly cue fries for 39 cents. Now a single one of those curly cues when strung out was a good 12 to 18 inches in length and tasted fantastic. Lots of people popped in just for a basket. The machinery to make those curly cues must have disappeared from the face of the earth. Ask for curly fries anywhere these days and all you get is one or two ringlets that don’t have much taste.
One other item that is missing from my early years is Pop-Cola or maybe it was Pop-Kola. It was a poor imitation of the original things, but it cost a lot less and with good reason since the taste was pretty miserable. The little shotgun house that was next to my grammar school served as a local quick shop for elementary kids. Only six to ten kids were permitted inside at a time. Those who had a nickel had to choose between a soft drink and a piece of candy. The drinks were inside a coke box that had a lid that opened upward. The bottles were arranged by brand inside long galvanized slots that ran the length of the box. Only the cap and the neck could be seen. To retrieve a bottle of any kind it was necessary to first slide the bottle down the slot and then make a right turn to guide it to large round hole that would permit you to pull it from its prison. Most of the soft drinks were warm to the touch. And by the time you got inside the store there was usually nothing left but Pop-Colas. That brand, despite all its misgivings, did have one advantage for 7- and 8-year-olds—there was one bottle in every case that had a special marked cap that entitled the finder to free cola. If you dawdled with your unopened cola too long the owner would snatch it from you and open it for you and your bottle cap would disappear before your eyes. Your free cola gone forever. However, the owner made the mistake of dumping all his used bottle caps on the ground in front of his store. The kids who were wise beyond their years, usually the 8-year olds, took to examining all the caps strewn on the ground looking for that elusive magical one. One day I was one of two or three eager students plying through the bottle caps when lo and behold there it was—the bottle cap with the freebie inside. I looked it over very carefully and it was a little rusted on the outside, but the inside still read “free.” I trudged inside with the rusty side down and handed it to the owner—expecting to be evicted any second. But he handed me a free Pop-Cola. For the next week I spent all my recesses looking for a rusty Pop-Cola bottle cap.
As I grew into my teen years I learned about a fascinating teenage ritual. Take 20 cents and buy an R C Cola and a small bag of Tom’s Salted Peanuts. Pour the Peanuts into the Cola and drink. It was and is quite addictive. In our neck of the woods it was pronounced RRRRR OOO CEE. Today Dr. Pepper owns the R C brand. Most people at that time spurned Dr. Pepper calling it prune juice.
The local favorite soft drink was Grapette. It was bottled 30 miles up the road at Camden, Ark. Benjamin Tyndle Fooks had moved to Camden in 1925 and bought a gas station. Soon thereafter the local bottling company went on the market. He had a hankering for something different so he bought the plant. He soon began experimenting with flavors. After experiencing hard times during the Depression, he learned through marketing studies that grape flavors were some of the most popular on the market. But there were none that had that true grape flavor. After two years of experimentation he developed the famous Grapette flavor. When he tried to copyright the name, he found to his dismay that the name had already been taken. He then traveled to Chicago and purchased the trademark for $500. He finally came up with a catchy slogan: “Thirsty or Not.” With the introduction of a lightweight bottle that had only half the glass of an ordinary cola bottle sales took off. Eventually there were 600 bottlers in 38 states. He introduced flavor syrups that were sold in clear glass banks. I had a clown bank myself, but it had one problem—it would not take half dollar coins. That was not usually a problem for me. However, when I did land one of those big denominational coins, I screwed off the top and found it would fit neatly inside the lid. In 1972 Fooks sold the company. It then passed into the hands of the company he feared the most—the Monarch Company, which had its own grape soft drink—Nu-grape. And just as Fooks feared his product passed into oblivion—at least in the United States. It still sells 70 million bottles a year on the international market. In Carson City, Nevada, two years ago I saw small bottles of Grapette, but they were not the real things. It was Nu-Grape in a Grapette bottle. But there is still hope. Wal-Mart signed a deal with Grapette International to sell the original product as a Sam’s Choice product. Just look for the grape soda variety. It is interesting that if you buy the bottle with Grapette on the outside you will not get the real McCoy. But if you buy the can from Wal-Mart without the label you will get the real thing. Now if they will only bring back those real frosty mugs and true curly due fries.
