Drinking Coca-Cola in old-time Phoenix


I'll admit it, I like Coca-Cola. I've never been one of those people who drinks it out of a giant cup, but I do enjoy drinking it. I buy it in bottles at my local grocery store, and usually pour it over ice, sitting in my backyard. I consider it one of the small joys of my life.

No, it's not like I dislike Pepsi, or RC, or anything like that, it's just that I decided that I wanted to be able to sit down and drink a Coke whenever I wanted to, and aside from coffee it's the most common drink I could think of, that I could get anywhere in the world. I used to imagine waking up in Shanghai, and still being able to get a Coke.


By the way, before we time-travel back to old-time Phoenix, I gotta tell you that I'm old enough to remember when it seemed as if I'd never be able to drink Coca-Cola ever again. I was living in California when the taste was reformulated, as "New Coke", and I bought up a bunch of the original formula, in those little tiny cans, which I stored in my apartment, and drank sparingly, thinking that when it was gone, it would be gone. Luckily, the company wised up not too long after that and brought back the original formula, which they called "Classic Coke". I've talked to people who said that it was all one big conspiracy, man, but I've been in Marketing long enough to know that sometimes companies make mistakes. They panicked because of the competition from Pepsi, and they freaked out.

Anyway, let's time-travel back to old-time Phoenix and have a Coca-Cola. We're going back to 1906, and yes, we can get it in bottles. And luckily for us, the logo is the same. Yes, there's cocaine in it, but just a trace, and so small that you really wouldn't notice. They say it helps the flavor.

Since it's 1906, and the price of sugar hasn't skyrocketed, like it will during the Great War, there's no need for the bottle to have the narrowing in the middle, which allowed Coca-Cola to give the illusion of having the same size bottles. A neat trick, which now we associate with Coke, as just part of their logo.

Let's open a bottle. Yes, we'll need a bottle opener, no twist-off tops in 1906! I have a couple of glasses here, and I got some ice from old man Lount's ice company. You know, Hattie's dad.

Looks great! Fizzing like crazy! Let's take a sip! Mmmm... Coca-Cola on ice, I love it!
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more