Summer Soda
What was your favorite drink when you were a kid? My generation will remember Nehi Orange. Ah…the sweet sugary sticky taste. Nehi drinks came out of one of those old ice-chest-style coolers with racks of bottles hanging by their necks. You slid it up and put your coin in and the lever released and there it was dripping all over your hand with little particles of ice stuck to it. Not at all like the cans that clunk out of the machine now. This afternoon treat was, as I recall, the high point of the day at Oakledge Girl Scout Camp. [Side Note: the camp was not far from where I ended up years later at Terrapin Station.]
My mother favored Dr. Pepper and that was always on hand in our old Frigidaire. She believed it was the healthiest of the soda choices as it contained…(did you know this?)...prune juice! We had a clock in the barn that had little soda bottles for the numerals 10, 2 and 4. That was their advertising…you were supposed to drink it three times a day for regularity. Oh my.
The grown-ups in my non-alcoholic home drank gallons of iced tea made the old-fashioned way with steeped hot tea poured over ice. Mint from the garden or lemons provided the two taste choices. Mother the health nut did not use sugar for a sweetener. Consequently my preference for the previously mentioned Nehi which was 98% sugar.
The neighbors were not so concerned with temperance. They sat out in their yard drinking their martinis and waving to me as I ran around the yard catching fireflies. The making of those drinks required some boogie woogie shaking on the part of the husband. They smoked Regent cigarettes and gave me the empty boxes.
Today my drink of choice for summer is raspberry iced tea. Sometimes I add mint from my tiny garden-in-a-tub on my porch. But lately I've had a hankerin’ for Nehi. I’ll have to go in search of a source.
My mother favored Dr. Pepper and that was always on hand in our old Frigidaire. She believed it was the healthiest of the soda choices as it contained…(did you know this?)...prune juice! We had a clock in the barn that had little soda bottles for the numerals 10, 2 and 4. That was their advertising…you were supposed to drink it three times a day for regularity. Oh my.
The grown-ups in my non-alcoholic home drank gallons of iced tea made the old-fashioned way with steeped hot tea poured over ice. Mint from the garden or lemons provided the two taste choices. Mother the health nut did not use sugar for a sweetener. Consequently my preference for the previously mentioned Nehi which was 98% sugar.
The neighbors were not so concerned with temperance. They sat out in their yard drinking their martinis and waving to me as I ran around the yard catching fireflies. The making of those drinks required some boogie woogie shaking on the part of the husband. They smoked Regent cigarettes and gave me the empty boxes.
Today my drink of choice for summer is raspberry iced tea. Sometimes I add mint from my tiny garden-in-a-tub on my porch. But lately I've had a hankerin’ for Nehi. I’ll have to go in search of a source.
posted by Free Spirit at 9:18 AM
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