Coca-Cola: Memories of good times in a more innocent age

I have recently re-discovered the joys of Coke — Coca-Cola, that is. What is it about this perfectly carbonated, sugery or diet drink, that elicits so many profound memories and associations?

For one thing, the marketing geniuses who masterminded this drink with the mysterious secret formula nearly 150 years ago, created not just the world’s most well-known and popular drink, but made it literally iconic in popular culture.

Coke signs going back decades are ubiquitous and instantly recognizable. How many old general stores have been photographed featuring Coke signs in the window or above the door? The advertisements and jingles are imprinted on our brains , more so than with any other drink. Why is this? Why do we feel so good about something as simple as a Coke, or other favorite soft drinks, for that matter?

When I was a kid, I hardly knew about Coca-Cola because we never had it in
our house. My mother was always health conscious and didn’t want us consuming too much soda/sugar because Coke and all those other soft drinks such as 7-Up and Pepsi, contain loads of sugar. Instead, we had apple juice (Mott’s), Welch’s grape juice or, yes, that most delicious fruit juice drink of all, “Hawaiian Punch,” a concoction of various fruit juices that came in huge cans as with Hi-C and other drinks, but also in bottles of fruit juice concentrate that we added water and ice to. Yum! That Was so good and refreshing, but as we all know now, all those fruit juices had a lot of added sugar and weren’t very healthy. There contained only about 10 percent real fruit juice. Apple juice — loads of sugar. Grape juice — the same, then and now.

So when the new and huge drugstore opened up on the highway a few blocks from where I lived in 1959 (K&B , an early New Orleans forerunner of the now ubiquitous Rite-Aides and CVS drugstores that dot the nation), I would sneak down the street to this grand drugstore which had, blissfully, a lunch counter and soda fountain, and there at last I could experience the full glory of Coca-Cola,albeit in Cherry Coke form, made with added cherry syrup. This tasted so very good to a 9-year-old who had never had a Coke before. What a guilty pleasure! Back in those more innocent days, kids were more free-roaming in their neighborhoods and seemed to explore more often than kids today because we LIVED to be outdoors running around free. I’m probably romanticizing this a bit. Mom likely gave us permission to go to K&B, just as we were allowed to go spend our allowance at the TG&Y dime store across the street in a small strip shopping center. These stores were literally just two short blocks away from our apartment. But again, as memory serves me 60 years later, I went on those shopping adventures by myself, or with my little brother.

In the 1960s, when the family would pile into our ‘56 Chevy Bel-Air and head for summer vacation in South Carolina, we would stop at “filling stations” to gas up. It was at those beloved highway oases that I rushed inside to the soft drink case and bought Orange Crushes and Nehi Gape sodas for the first time. Those were consumed along with packages of Lance cheese crackers, perhaps a little bag of very salty Planter’s Peanuts, or a package of Nekot peanut butter crackers.

Learning the lessons Mom taught us, I never got addicted to Coca-Cola or orange soda or root beer, but I had my fair share over the years. I never developed a taste for beer, so my guilty drinks were always soft drinks because I knew then, as well as now, that they are terrible for you, bur for pure enjoyment nothing beats a Coke or a Fresca, which is the diet drink I’ve always preferred.

Recently, for nostalgia’s sake, I bought a carton of 6-ounze bottles of Coke, the same containers and amount that cost a dime when I was young. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed those. It had been many years since I last had a Coke in a glass bottle instead of a plastic bottle or can. And now, someone recently told me about Coke Zero, and it’s so good and such an improved diet version with no calories that I cannot tell the difference between that a regular Coke. Ottles of those sre in my fridge now.

A final footnote to my soft drink saga. When I had a lawn-mowing business in my junior and senior high school days, one of my customers, who lived down the street in a big white brick ranch house, was the family who owned the Barq’s Beverage Company, which originated in New Orleans. Barq’s Root Beer and Creme Soda were big competitors of Coke on hot, summer days, especially after mowing grass on exceedingly sultry New Orleans summer afternoons. The lady who lived in the house had a big yard, and it was hard work cutting grass back then because all the lawns were thick St. Augustine grass. But Mrs. Robinson told me I was welcome to all the Barq’s soda I wanted from the big cooler in the garage. Needless to say, I developed a taste for that particular kind of root beer, which was in those days fully associated with New Orleans and its legendary Fried Oyster Po-Boy sandwiches on French bread. To me, there was no better lunch combination than a Barq’sroot beer and po-boy sandwich, whether oyster, shrimp or roast beef, oozing with gravy and mayonaise. Cokes just don’t factor into that equation.

I know I shouldn’t be drinking soft drinks, even sparkling soda with Stevia sweetener, but who can resist. And yes, I full well know that water is the best thirst quencher. But it is that iconic 6-ounce bottle of ice cold Coca-Cola that still towers above them all, in taste, memories, and popular culture.

Coca-Cola, then:

And now:

Coca-Cola history from Nostalgia Road: