Less Than 1 Calorie Per Bottle, outside the Birchwood Cafe, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I had planned a post on writing for this sunny Friday afternoon. But the day felt like Summer, and I ran out of steam. So with fans blazing across the studio, and windows still open at 9pm, I’ve opted for something simpler.
I was running back through the photographic archives when this little gem of a bench caught my attention. It reminds me of days gone by, times when we ran slip sliding through the sprinkler, guzzled soft drinks, drank gallons of Kool-Aid, and even flavored garden hose water — anything to keep the sweltering Southern heat at bay.
Did you have a favorite childhood soft drink? You can’t be from Georgia and not love Coca-Cola (I’m a big Coke Zero fan). My other favorite was RC Cola (Royal Crown). In 1905, Claude Hatcher, a young graduate pharmacist from Columbus, Georgia, began creating soft drinks in the basement of his family’s wholesale grocery business. RC Cola was born (I used to love their jingles).
Diet Rite (an RC product) came along in 1958 and was the first diet soda ever to be sold (in limited quantities). In 1962, Diet Rite Cola was introduced nationwide and rose to #4 in 18 months. Thus began America’s love affair with the diet soft drink.
The weathered bench in the photograph that boasts “Diet-Rite — Less Than 1 Calorie Per Bottle” is outside the Birchwood Cafe in Minneapolis. Remember cyclamate and saccharin (my grandmother used to sweeten her coffee with it)? Well, all that’s changed; Diet Rite is now sweetened with 21st Century low-cal Splenda.
Diet-Rite and RC Cola, along with Coca-Cola, remind me of my childhood in Georgia. We used to drop Planters Peanuts into a frosty blue-green bottle of Co-Cola (Southern dialect shortens the word) from the metal vending machine at my Granddaddy’s shop. Forget the can; you haven’t tasted cola until you’ve taken a long cold swig from a glass bottle. I still buy them once in a while during seasonal appearances on the grocery store shelf.
So what’s your favorite summer soft drink memory? Shasta, Bubba Cola, RC, Pepsi, Cherry Coke, Clicquot Club, Schweppe’s, Fanta, Dr Pepper, Orange Crush? Or maybe your parents didn’t let you drink soda. What was their replacement (or their “no sugar” bribe)?
Oh, by the way, (here comes the healthy part of this post) you won’t want to miss the food at the Birchwood, a cool cafe with great ice cream and a wide range of natural and organic foods. The Birchwood was established in 1926 by the Bursch family; the cafe was originally a dairy. It’s not quite Summer yet, but I bet the tables outside the Birchwood were hopping with Good Real Food (and a few natural colas) on this shiny April day!
Good Real Food, Izzy’s At The Birchwood, Orange Crush, Drink Clicquot Club, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, all photos © 2007-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Friday, April 3rd, 2008
Great photos, QM!! I love the park bench; that ivy behind it looks ancient, like it’s been growing there forever.
I rarely drink soft. Mom always bought Shasta or Safeway brand. I never got the habit.
BTW, Em and I were looking at Science Fair projects, and one we seriously considered was the one where you put a rusty nail in a can of Coke and see what happens. In researching the different soda-related projects, we came across these items about Coke (and some science projects that proved the first five or so). I add them here more because they’re fascinating versus trying to dissuade anyone from drinking soda. 8)
-Did you know that if you put a nail into soda and let it sit there for a few days it will disappear?
-If you have rust spots from chrome car bumpers, it can be removed with soda.
-In certain states in the US, the highway patrol officers carry two gallons of coke with them to remove blood from the highway after car accidents.
-A tooth will dissolve in a cup of coke in 24-48 hours.
-To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl.
Let the Coca-Cola sit for one hour, then flush clean.
-The distributors of coke have been using it to clean the engines of their trucks for about 20 years!
-One person said the delivery guy that used to bring coke to
her unit said they had to change the tubes that took coke from
the cylinder to the machine, because it ate through them after a while.
-Another person said he used coke to dissolve concrete that
had hardened inside a water pipe he was laying for a new house.
-The carbonation in all soft drinks causes calcium loss in the
bones through a three-stage process, which is:
A. The carbonation irritates the stomach.
B. The stomach “cures” the irritation the only way it knows how. It adds the only antacid at its disposal: calcium. It gets the calcium from the blood.
C. The blood, now low in calcium, replaces its supply from the bones. If it did not do this, muscular and brain function would be damaged.
-Roughly one can of soda has 10 teaspoons of sugar, 150 calories, 30 to 55mg of Caffeine, and is loaded with artificial food colours and sulphites.
LikeLike
OH, ybonesy, it looks so bad when you put it like that! 8) Actually, that list is pretty fascinating, isn’t it? I’ve heard many of those before. Not sure I buy into all of them, but I know the chemicals aren’t good for a body. Still, it’s one of the few vices I have left and one I’m not likely to give up anytime soon!
When I drink more water and eat healthier, I don’t tend to drink as many soft drinks. Lately, I have been opting for water more. It feels good to do that. But I like the caffeine in a super cold Coke (the diet variety). For some reason, it’s refreshing to me.
If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d make more iced tea. I prefer it to cola products. Sometimes nothing does it like good old H2O though.
Hey, what Science Fair project did you end up going with?
LikeLike
QM – I remember my sisters and I going to the airport with my Dad when I was a kid and we would watch the planes fly right over us. Then after an hour of this we would head off to the A&W drive-in and have root beers in glass mugs. This was the best soft drink ever! It has never tasted the same since the A&W drive-ins disappeared.
I don’t drink sodas anymore because I have a slight problem with my bone density and my doctor said no fizzy brown beverages. I may have a soda maybe once or twice a year. I really don’t miss them. I do have to have a cup of coffee every day though. I can’t seem to get coffee out of my diet. N
LikeLike
I love the bench photo, QM. I remember my mom buying Tab as a kid. She seemed to be perpetually on a diet. It had a slightly metallic taste (maybe that of the aluminum can.) I lost my taste for sodas along the way. On a hot day, I prefer water, tea or iced cold, not too sweet, lemonade.
I am so jealous that it is warm where you are. We got a foot of snow last night. It is still coming down, the wind is picking-up and I’m reflecting on hot drinks to consume after shoveling!
LikeLike
Well, she was going to do the tooth dissolving in Coke (elementary science fair projects prove that one, the rusty nail, and the removal of blood one) and Jim even called our dentist to see if he might be able to provide the teeth (Em wanted to test Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, and Crush to see if they all dissolved teeth) but we couldn’t get the teeth. I guess there are health issues associated with giving out people’s teeth. 8) But wouldn’t that be a good elementary school science project? To show the effect of sugar and carbonation on teeth?
So, she went for figuring out what works best to get gum out of hair: rubbing alcohol, peanut butter, or one other thing that I’m now forgetting). She just got the hair last evening from the woman who cuts Dees hair (Dee’s hair will be used for the project).
I drink a lot of water. In the winter, my drink of choice is hot water. It warms me up. I will on a rare occasion order a can of Coke, not diet because I figure the sugar is less bad for you than the sweetener, and it is refreshing over ice. But it’s probably a good thing that I don’t have the vice because I really don’t like the taste of any of the sweeteners, which means I’d go for the ones with all the sugar.
LikeLike
This is a very eye catching photo & brings back many childhood memories. My favorite soda was RC Cola & they also began offering it with a touch of lemon.
Does anyone remember Fizzies? They were about the size of a Necco wafer & you simply dropped one into a glass of water. Fizz….which had many flavors including cola & rootbeer.
Every year befor Easter my Mom would make homemade rootbeer & bottle it. I forget the name of the company that offered the syrupy extract to make it, but I know it needed to stay warm & covered while it fermented.
yb’s info on the nail, etc., dropped in a soda is believable, beacuse when I was working & we hauling the ingredients for sodas, it was required that the trailer had a hazardous material sign on them & the driver had to be qualifed to have a Haz-Mat endorsement on their license.
This stuff is caustic.
I prefer water over soda. I especially enjoy some of the flavored ones.
But every now & then I will have some Pepsi or gingerale.
D
LikeLike
During my youth, my mother was fond of buying unsweetened Kool-Aid. My father was diabetic which meant we all had to suffer. Drinks that could be prepared with sweetener were the order of the day.
I longed for soda. My uncle, a farmer, had an old fridge in his machine shop. The best part of visiting him was having an ice cold can of Coke from that rusty fridge, a rare treat (He was also a milkman. During my teenage years we drank chocolate milk, deadly cold, from the back of the big refrigerated truck parked behind his house.)
Our family started to drink Diet Coke when it hit the scene in the 80s. Then Diet Pepsi. It was a compromise that made us all somewhat happy. Drinking diet sodas was a habit I adopted. When my chums would drink regular soda I would be consuming diet. They thought me strange.
I’m mostly a water guy now. But since Coke Zero came to China last year I do drink one or two a week.
You’re right, there is nothing like a cold soda from a glass bottle. They still sell the wee glass bottles of Coke in China (aimed at the after-school student crowd). It’s nice to see that hasn’t completely disappeared.
LikeLike
Neece, I just sent you an email, but happy belated birthday! Egads, I can’t believe I forgot another one!!
I haven’t kicked my coffee habit either, but since I drink it with so much milk, I figure it helps me get Calcium. Although, I bet the caffeine lessens the beneficial impact of Calcium. Hope not, but it seems like all these yummy things are ultimately bad for you.
LikeLike
QM,
neat photos and the post brought back memories. The first is one I don’t personally remember, but my mother told me that I would go to neighbors’ homes when I was 3 and 4 yrs. old, and ask, “Do you have any coca lola?”
Then there was Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer. When its jingle was played on the radio, I first thought they were singing “Razzle Dazzle Root Beer.”
When I was in High School, the Bob’s Drive-ins in L.A. served Vanilla Coke with a chaser of cream…yummy!
When the oldest daughter was 2 yrs. old, her Nana visited that summer, and whenever we got in the car T. would ask, “beer?” My mother, quite shocked, asked if we let our little girl have beer! I laughed and told her that the little one was only asking, hopefully, if we were going to go to the A&W Root “Beer” drive-in. We all loved those frosty mugs, and they had tiny ones for kids.
LikeLike
It was coke spiders all the way for my sister and I! Couldn’t imagine anything worse now!
LikeLike
Stevo’s comment about how they still sell coke in glass bottles reminds me that at the Fruit Baskets, which cater largely to a Mexican market, they sell a bunch of sodas in glass bottles. The sodas come from Mexico and are a bit sweeter than the US versions of the same drinks, plus they’re made with cane sugar.
One day last summer my friend Patty and I went there to pick up fruit and we ended up each buying a soda in a glass bottle. It was a sweltering day, and finding those sodas were like discovering a swimming pool in the desert.
LikeLike
Neecy, ah, the old A&W Root Beer. They really were good, weren’t they? I had forgotten about root beer. I don’t generally like it but I did like the refreshing cold A&W served at those roller skate-type drive-ins. Liz loves fresh root beer, the kind that is not fake but really made from something similar to the original sassafras root.
oliverowl, I wonder if it runs in your family, that love of root beer?! That’s a great story about Liz’s older sister.
Of course, I couldn’t help but look up root beer. In addition to the original being made from sassafras root, root beers today may also contain vanilla, wintergreen, cherry tree bark, liquorice root, sarsaparilla root, nutmeg, anise, molasses, cinnamon, and clove.
I read at one site that the discovery in the 1960s that one of the main ingredients in sassafras root — sassafrol — may cause cancer may have led to a decline in root beer drinkers. But with the popular micro-brewery, root beers are making a comeback.
There are currently 2514 brands of root beer according to Root Beer World (LINK). The site also lists all the brands. Two other sites for all things root beer are Luke’s Root Beer Pages (LINK) and Ask Dr Root Beer (LINK). Here’s one more link for Root Beer Trivia (LINK). Have fun all you root beer fans!
LikeLike
breathepeace, it seemed warm to me Friday but took a dive last night and we got 3 inches of snow! How did that happen? Today I am chilled and contemplating warm drinks myself. I had forgotten about Tab. Yes, I remember Tab.
diddy, your mom used to make homemade root beer right before Easter every year? I wonder why she made it around Easter. I guess that would be about now wouldn’t it. You might be having a root beer body memory. Have you ever heard about that — memories that come back to us through the body at seasonal times? 8)
Simonne, another Coke fan. But what’s the “spiders” part?
LikeLike
Stevo, I remember the unsweetened variety of Kool-Aid. It became popular when they started saying that cane sugar was bad for you. Amazing, since we all seemed to turn out okay and did consume cane sugar in a lot of things. I don’t think it was to the excess though. I definitely ate better back then when Mom was cooking for us than I probably do now.
There used to be a lot of cane sugar in Coca-Cola. But I noticed a change in the taste of Coke in maybe the 80’s decade. It rarely tastes to me like it did in my youth. Once in a while, I come across a drive-in that serves Coke in a glass with crushed ice. You know, those mixtures of syrup and carbonation with the tubes running to the fountain? Once in a while they get the mix right and it’s like the old days.
Stevo, I think I read that drinks like Diet Rite started out so that diabetics like your father would be able to have a soft drink once in a while. Or at least something different. Then the diet drinks went mainstream. It must have been tough as a kid growing up around those restrictions.
I LOVE ice cold chocolate milk. It’s another high-cal thing though that I don’t consume all that often in its whole form. So you can get the Cokes in glass bottles in China? I guess Coke is all over the world now.
BTW, I have a Coke Zero about once a day at lunch time. I rarely drink more than that a day. I have 2 cups of good roasted coffee in the morning, a Coke Zero for lunch (during the week). Then usually water the rest of the day.
And milk for dinner. I absolutely love milk and have no allergies to it. It feels wholesome to me to drink milk and I also get a lot of calcium from it to keep the bones strong. I do like variety in what I drink though. I’m not one to just consume water all day. This weekend, I made some iced tea. 8)
LikeLike
QM, what a wonderful piece and so full of memories for me. I loved Coca-Cola and I agree with you that it tasted different when I was little. I drank enough of it to rot out my stomach and eat every bone in my body, but somehow my body didn’t react that way. Remembered Diet-Rite and Tab, both equally bad pops, and so far they haven’t made a diet soda that tastes right…something about pure cane sugar that makes pop pop.
I don’t drink much soda now, but still enjoy a fountain coke (heavy on the coke syrup) and especially like cherry cokes from a soda fountain…heavy on the cherry syrup.
About milk…we have a local dairy (Shatto) that makes chocolate milk that is the best I have tasted in a long time. Thick, luscious chocolate milk. Can’t be good for if I enjoy it that much.
Hot tea is my drink of choice. Another food around which I have so many pleasant memories.
LikeLike
QM, yes my Mom made it every year when I was younger. oo’s comment made me think that it was Dad’s Rootbeer that she made the needed syrup from. I haven’t talked with her since this post, so I’m still not certain.
I drink very few soft drinks now, however I still enjoy Pepsi.
Coke is too sweet for me & yes, the flavor has changed over the years. I used to like Squirt also & was shocked that it is still available.
J is a tea drinker. He can’t even stand the smell of coffee, though I drink both. My favorite coffee is Hazlenut.
Last week & today have been busy for us & I’ll discuss more with you in private. J & I are fine, nothing to worry about there. We missed your birthday? Gosh, I feel awful. Time just seems to be flying by. Love, D
LikeLike
Bob, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the taste of Coke has changed over the years. They say they have that secret formula but what is it and has it changed?
Can’t wait to try the Shatto chocolate milk. I’m drooling for ice cold fresh chocolate milk!
diddy, hope everything is okay. We’ll have to connect so I can catch up with what’s going on. Nope, you didn’t miss my birthday — it’s not til summer. I’m usually in Georgia during my birthday it seems. Not sure about this year though.
Mom says that one of them is sweeter, either Pepsi or Coke, and I can’t remember now which one. Or if she likes the Coke or the Pepsi better. I’ll have to check with her again.
LikeLike
QM, That’s what I thought that your birthday was in the summer. I misread yb’s comment to Neecy. I realized my mistake this morning.
I’ll try calling you later tonight. Everything is fine, so I don’t want you to worry. It’s just something I don’t want to write about right now. I’m certain you’ve had a trying day & if I get your voice mail, you can call me back. I’d send you an email, but I want to hear your voice. D
LikeLike
Guess what I drank today? The place I work provides free coffee, tea, or soda for employees, but I rarely take advantage of the freebies. (I only like coffee with steamed or heated milk, so I’ll sometimes go down and get someone in the coffee station to make me a latte, which they don’t charge me for, but since that’s technically more than just a coffee I only do it about once a month. And I’ve already said that I’m not a soda drinker.)
Anyhoo, because of this conversation, I thought today, What the hey? I’m going to have a soda with lunch. So I got a sandwich and salad and my free Pepsi with ice. It was *really* refreshing.
Gosh, I know how people get Coke habits. Between the caffeine and the sugar, I could probably have one a day easily. But I won’t; I don’t eat in the cafeteria often. But it was a fun treat for today.
LikeLike
QM, after consideration of what you went through today, I will call tomorrow. Just wanted to let you know.
yb, Like you I rarely drink soda. I wanted to add that also enjoy a Dr. Pepper occasionally. Mmmm…D
LikeLike
Last night I couldn’t sleep & turned into the Food Network channel. It just so happened that the show that was on is called Unwrapped. I’ve watched it many times in the past. Well, This episode was on sodas, popcorn, & other things that established years ago. They visited a store in CA that sells soda from all over the world & even vintage soda such as Nesbitt Orange Crush. I wish they were nationwide, as the selection was unreal! Another segment brought up the Fizzies I commented on earlier. They began in the th 60’s & are making a comeback! Guess where they are made! (QM, I think you will be surprised) Minneapolis, MN! D
LikeLike
ybonesy, glad to hear you indulged in a little soda pop, soft drink, pop, Coke, whatever we choose to call these drinks. When I was growing up in Georgia, everything cola was a “Coke” no matter what it was. “Coke” was the generic term for cola. I think when I moved to Pennsylvania, they called it “pop” but diddy will have to confirm. I’m pretty sure it “soda” in Minnesota. But I may bet getting all confused. Anyhow, glad it was refreshing!
diddy, I’m playing catch-up with the comments. It was good to talk to you and J. on the phone and catch up. And I can’t believe the Fizzies are made in Minneapolis. I honestly don’t remember them so I must have not liked them. But it sounds like you can still get Fizzies. Amazing!
LikeLike
QM, in western PA most people call it pop, though my family always called it soda. In central PA they call it soda, so if anyone here calls it pop, you can be certain they didn’t grow up in this area.
It was good talking to you too,QM. There’s just something special about hearing a person’s voice. Especially when you care so much for them. Glad you also got to speak to J.
BTW, actually Fizzies are very good & from what I understand from the show I watched, they are much healthier than soda. They can also be sucked on like candy. I never tried that. They no longer offer the cola flavor, but have several flavors available. D
LikeLike
diddy, thanks for clearing that up about “soda” and “pop,” at least in Pennsylvania. Yes, there is something comforting about hearing someone’s voice. It’s sometimes more intimate than email or writing; sometimes less intimate than a face-to-face visit. But a good in-between! It’s always good to catch up. 8)
LikeLike
[…] -related to post Less Than 1 Calorie Per Bottle […]
LikeLike