Art © George Kovach



Man, does cream soda bring back boyhood memories! I remember going to the Aurora Club House and buying a quart of cream soda pop and sitting on the steps and totally indulging in pure, cold, refreshing flavor. Then deciding what we'd do. Being right next door to the biggest lumber saw mill in town--the only one--we had a choice. Play tag on acres of lumber stacks in the back or play tag on the log piles across the street. Both were just as dangerous, but exciting to a bunch of boys all hopped up on sugar from soda pop. Every boy had his favorite flavor of pop, mine being cream soda. If you couldn't get any money from your mom - 25 cents a quart bottle - then any flavor would do...any that was shared with you.

Walking along sipping and laughing. Then find a water hole to put what was left of your pop into so it would stay cool and jump lumber piles or run all over those huge log piles playing tag all afternoon. Then find our pop and finish it walking home. Had my mom known I was doing that, I'd still be grounded - 50+ years later. Let's see---there was Inky, Mackey. Jimmer, Ingamore, Den-Den, Chubby [all nicknames] and oh yeah--- they called me Slip----short for slippery. I think it had something to do with always getting away. Whenever we were discovered doing something wrong, everyone would take off running in the same direction, except me. I always ran another way, alone. I never got caught. I discovered at an early age---old people chasing you were stupid---they followed the herd. I'd turn left or right and lay down and hide---- let 'em run by----get up and walk. No one paid any attention to a boy calmly walking alone.

My grandson brought me a 6 pack of cream soda pop---in glass bottles--- for Easter. I'm sitting here sipping on a cold bottle being flushed with pure sugar delight and a storm of memories of an age gone by. It's an age my grandson never lived through and never will. A simple age, a safe age for little boys to be little boys. Yeah, little boys and cream soda pop---maybe, just maybe---the Good Lord will have a saw mill in Heaven----and cold quart bottles of pop and everyone will be called by their nickname.

Until I find out----'sip'----life is good!

©Jerry Soyka March 21, 2010 Used With Permission All Rights Reserved By Author Mail share





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