A lesson in when to open your mouth

I learned the hard way how to drink a Coke. Or, more specifically, how to burp while drinking a Coke.

I was tagging along with Mama when she went to see Daddy at his job. He was the office manager for a machine shop and there was a Coke machine across from his desk.

Soft drinks were a special treat for a guy less than 5 years old. At home we drank a lot of milk, iced tea and Kool-Aid.

So, when Daddy inserted the coin into the Coke machine slot, turned the crank and grabbed the bottle that slid down the chute, I was an unpracticed and uninformed soft drink chugger. 

That first swig was a doozy as I felt the bubbles dancing around my mouth and down my throat.

A couple more big gulps and I felt the need to relieve the resulting gas in my tummy. The carbonation came up my esophagus and found its way out my nose.

Whoa! My nostrils were overwhelmed as gas bubbles exited, leaving me coughing from the experience.

“You have to burp out your mouth,” Mama explained as she and Daddy tried to contain their giggles.

You can bet I opened wide from then on when I felt the need to belch. It’s a lesson that’s stood the test of time.

Fast forward a couple of years. We’re inside Trotter’s Store, just up the road from our house. To the left of the front door was a drink cooler in the red colors of Coca-Cola. You could lift panels on top to reveal drinks chilling in icy water.

When my two older brothers and I were lucky enough to have a few coins to spend, we would look down into the cooler and select a cold drink. Down 

in the abyss was a wide range of soft drinks, not just Coke and Pepsi.

Dipping a hand into the water, I would find Sun Drops, RC Colas, Nehis, Upper 10s, even Cheerwines. 

I remember vividly the day when Coke raised its retail price by 20 percent, from a nickel to 6 cents. Imagine the audacity!

There was a mitigating circumstance, however. You could bring back your empty bottles and receive a deposit on each.

For that reason, if you had a project that required some extra change, you could walk up and down roadways looking for drink bottles that had been tossed, presumably by people who didn’t need no stinkin’ deposit. If you found enough bottles, you could buy yourself one of those 6-cent Cokes.

Coke bottles were sought-after for another reason. During the ’50s and ’60s, small towns had their own Coke bottling plants and the bottles from those plants had the town’s name embossed on the bottom.

So, you couldn’t drink a Coke without looking at the bottom to see what town it came from. With the deposit system in effect, bottles could move from town to town or even state to state.

By the time I took my first job as a curbhop at Melvin’s Drive-In, the other employees had a game they liked to play. When two or more were drinking Cokes, they would look to see where theirs came from. The winner was the one with the most distant Coke bottle.

A few bottles came out with no town name, just a circle. That was known as Outer Space, thus enabling its owner to declare himself the winner.

I once heard about an elderly lady who had determined that carbonated soft drinks were sinful, or at least an unnecessary consumer good meant to entice young people to even lower habits.

The woman was at a family gathering one fine Sunday, with a number of kids running around in the yard. It being a hot day, the children soon were demanding cold drinks to quench their thirst.

The older woman watched as the kids guzzled down Cokes and Pepsis. Presumably, at her age, her gastric system was not what it used to be, often needing whatever help she could find to assist digestion.

Predictably, the children were feeling the effects of carbonation. The woman noticed as two or three close by belched out loudly.

Sitting up straight in her lawn chair, she said, “If it’ll do that to you, give me one of ’em.”

Let’s just hope she knew not to burp through her nose.

■ Larry Penkava, is a writer for Randolph Hub. Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com.

OTHER TIDBITS ...

Simulated set up at Board of Elections

■ The Randolph County Board of Elections is holding a simulated election today (Wednesday, July 23) at 1 p.m. at its office, 1457 N. Fayetteville St., Asheboro. The simulated election is in accordance with standards established by the NC State Board of Elections and is required for the county board to purchase upgraded voting equipment and software. Print Elect, an affiliate of Elections Systems & Software, will be conducting the simulation with assistance from the staff of the Randolph County Board of Elections and bipartisan teams of precinct officials. The simulated election is open to the public. Randolph County Board of Elections members may be in attendance. There will be no official board actions taken at the event.