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Mike Moser Wanna match for a Coke? Don't you miss those glass Coca-Cola bottles? When I was in high school I was lucky enough
to work at Mims' Super Saver in my home town. My friend's father
hired a bunch of us from the high school to work Saturdays from
7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for $7. Strange how I always had money in my
pocket back then ... I am sure Harold Mims employed a couple of
extra boys more than he needed but his was the only grocery store
in town and unless you hauled pulp wood or worked on a farm,
that was all there was to do. At break time when the stock boys and baggers
would gather around the soft drink machine, we would partake
in our favorite pastime and match for Cokes. By the way, Coke
is the generic term in Alabama for soft drink. It was quite confusing
for me when I moved from Minnesota to Alabama and a new friend
asked me, "Do you want a Coke?" Then he proceeded to ask, "What kind?" "Man," I thought. "This is
cool. They have more than one flavor of Coke here?" Got quite the strange look when I responded,
"Sure, I'll have a cherry Coke." They make them now,
but back then, our choices of "Coke" were Sprite, orange
Fanta and grape Fanta. Some of the old timers in the area called
Cokes "dope," making reference to the legend that Coca-Cola
was laced with cocaine. If I said something about wanting a "soda,"
or "soft drink," I was ragged out of the school for
the rest of the day. On Saturdays, however, it was nothing but
Cokes. We crowded around the soft drink machine, jockeying for
position to purchase the lucky drink. Everyone would pay one
dime for their drink, and then put a dime to the side. The drink bottles would clank and clunk through
the machine and slam down the open chute and the purchaser would
grab the bottle, turn his back on the crowd, and hold the bottle
high to read the name of the city stamped on the bottom of the
bottle. The person getting the bottle with the city farthest
from Thorsby, Alabama, won! Another contest required one to walk up to
another, say, "Match ya for a Coke." That meant the
person losing had to pay for the other guy's soft drink. You would see Nashville, Birmingham, a lot
of Atlanta, even one every once in a while from San Francisco
and Honolulu. More than once I walked away with a pocket full
of dimes. It was so competitive that we had a map of the United
States posted beside the drink machine, a string and pins which
were used to measure the distance from our town to competing
cities. It might seem that this was gambling but I
don't carry scars of having suffered irreparable harm from betting
on the distance of a soft drink bottle. I am not a habitual gambler,
nor are any of my friends. But it sure was fun. The thrill of
competing and winning, I guess. Another nice feature of those glass bottles
were their return value. A nickel for every eight-ounce bottle
returned to the store, and 25 cents for the large quart bottles.
With the way people threw bottles out vehicle windows it was
nothing to walk the side of the road for a few minutes and gather
enough bottles to pay for a snack or game of pool. It might seem a simple pleasure, but then,
those were simpler times. |