It is well known that reading is good for you – as long as what you are reading is accurate. It is also hoped that it will add to your knowledge storage. In fact, if it is really good reading, it will make your eyes light up, and your mind say “howdy.” Unfortunately, there are many times when the criteria of good reading does not show up in what is presented to you. A good example of that occurred the other day, when I started to read an article that purportedly was waxing eloquent on the virtues of soda of a nostalgic type.
Well, they loused it up from the get-go since anyone with any kind a well-rounded background knows that it is not soda, but “pop”. On the off chance that there is someone out there who does not know this, I will be specific in detailing this knowledge for the betterment of all mankind – and womankind as well. Let me note, that I grew up in Western Pennsylvania and led a rather sheltered life. Until I was 22, the farthest I had ever ventured from that area was when we lived in Morgantown, W.V. when I was about five.
As a consequence, when I did hit 22, I traveled across the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania to live in Philadelphia for a year. The reason for this odyssey was that I was there to go to graduate school. On my first day there, my roommate (also from Western Pennsylvania) and I decided that since we were now big time graduate students we should celebrate.
There was a drugstore nearby so we went in and ordered two root beer sodas. Well, to our shock we were handed two glasses of root beer. In Western Pennsylvania what we ordered would have given us root beer with one or two scoops of ice cream in the glass. We protested, but the clerk said in his Philadelphia accent that we ordered “sodas”, and if we wanted ice cream sodas, we should have said so. We said that we had, but then we realized that the natives of that area were calling pop, ”soda.” We were so astounded that we went to a grocery store, bought some pop and ice cream and made our own root beer sodas. (Actually, we did not do that, but we should have).
Thus, to read the article mentioned above and see the wrong name given something prevalent in most people’s background was somewhat traumatic. If one could ignore this, then the article did have some nostalgic points. For example. It mentioned a certain brand of ginger ale as being well known in Michigan. Well, it was in Western Pennsylvania too. In fact, it was the only ginger ale I ever tasted. It was so lousy that as a kid, I would not drink ginger ale, and it was not until many years later that I found that not all ginger ale tasted that bad.
Good old Hires Root Beer was also mentioned. Again, it was the only root beer I ever tasted – until someone brought in Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer. I hadn’t seen Hires for years until we were in Seattle a few years ago and they had it there. One thing about Hires that everybody gave it credit for was that it made great root beer sodas. In addition, if you had a good drug store and they had the root beer syrup, you could get a root beer milkshake. Man, they were good.
While I have had to suffer with some people using soda when they mean pop, I thought that I was pretty safe with the term “milkshake”. Then, one day when The Blonde in the house and I were visiting our older son in Boston, he took us out for lunch. I ordered a chocolate (assuming that they did not have the root beer syrup) milkshake. What I received was a class of milk with some chocolate powder mixed in. No ice cream included! This time I was told that if I wanted ice cream in it, I should have ordered a frappe. Now why would someone call a milkshake a “frappe?” It simply does not make any sense.
I did not forget that I would be specific on why everyone should be drinking pop and not soda. Some people are just naturally argumentative and will try to tell me that it is soda and not pop. I inform them that I might give some credence to their position, if they take one simple step. That step is to take me into a grocery store’s frozen section and show me some “sodacycles”!!!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com
