Two Cents

When I was a kid soda pop came in glass bottles. Period. You paid a deposit on the bottle, 2 cents, and you could return the empty bottle and get your 2 cents back. That may not sound exciting now, but it was pretty good then--better than you're thinking. 

This was when I was 7 or 8 or 9. I could ride my bike to the little store on Hill Street, pay a nickel for a bottle of Dr Pepper, plus 2 cents, and a nickel for a small bag of Fritos, and be happy.

Besides, 3 cents would buy a popsicle--or you could get two popsicles for a nickel. So a 2-cent return on a pop bottle was a very good thing because it was rare when I didn't have even one penny or, as my mother would say, "one red cent."

By the way, Fudgesicles and Creamsicles were more expensive, a nickel each. But two returned bottles plus a penny could get you one. 

In 1957, before I was 17, the first aluminum cans of soda pop appeared. Handy, sure, but the taste was not as good as before. Truly. Which didn't stop anyone, apparently, from buying those cans of pop. I was no longer riding my bike to the corner store in 1957, don't even know what happened to that bike. And I can't report on my soda pop consumption in those days, except for the times Wayne, my boyfriend, and I went up to A&W for a hot dog and a root beer.

We did not have soda pop in the house at all times. Sunday's treat was my dad's homemade lemonade. But when we did drink pop, it was Hire's Root Beer, or Dad's Root Beer, 7up, or Canada Dry Ginger Ale, or maybe the rare Pepsi-Cola. They were the soft drinks we knew in the Brimley house. Plus my corner store Dr Pepper.

About me drinking Dr Pepper as a child. I didn't know it had caffeine. Don't even know if it was labeled as containing caffeine. I wasn't reading labels in those days.