A ‘drink’ and a pack of 4-Corner Nabs

donbosco

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In the back of my Deddy’s hardware store stood on old refrigerator. It was full of a variety of ‘drinks’ that his patrons would choose from. “Drinks.” That’s what we called them in #DeepChatham, not sodas or pop, at least not in #BonleeHardware. When I was quite young there were actually a few of the older men that even used the term ‘dope’ in reference to days when such bottled beverages were supposed to be laced with cocaine or other pharmaceutical derivatives. Our fridge offered YooHoos, Fanta Grape and Orange, and Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. The last two, the colas, were in pretty stiff competition with one another for #1.

I admit that as a boy that I enjoyed the less popular sweet and syrupy Grape Fanta. I’ve grown up and the Orange is my favorite now. There were no cans in those days and the bottles were glass and returnable. You needed a sturdy old school opener. More than one time I walked the ditch around #Bonlee with a feed sack picking up bottles to sell them back to Deddy for the five cent deposit. I’m not sure when that exchange ended though I do remember from my days tending bar that the last hold-out for returnable bottles was Pabst Blue Ribbon in the late 1990s. Maybe there are some returnables in North Carolina now though I am unaware of them.

The patrons of #BonleeHardware were mainly local farmers and repairmen. Deddy had his stock arranged in an interesting way and one that not every customer figured out. There was a bit of chaos to the order I admit but in general an “Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral” inventorying was the rule. Of course, that was all by Deddy’s definition. The store was the kind of place where the customer was ‘waited on’ though many long-time regulars knew a good bit about where they could find things. Just the same, ‘tending’ to them was part of the job. As a young boy I was shooed away by some of the old men but by high school I knew as well as anyone save Deddy where the stock was kept. A lot of problem-solving went on on that well-oiled board floor.

Plumbing and ‘watering’ set-ups and wiring tricks were passed along side-by-side livestock market information and weather prognostications. Most everyone grew some broilers (chickens) and had cows and pigs too. Advice on doctoring animals was also a pretty hot topic and the surrender was always, “Well, you’re going to have to call Floyd Smith on that one I reckon.” Mr. Smith was a ‘real’ cowboy from down in #DeeperChatham. They said he was a might rough and tough and knew all about cows and horses. How this was so was never clear, just accepted wisdom. The worst plumbing snafus and conundrums often ended up in the column of Shug Phillips. Shug was a genius with water and it was fairly evident that he was no stranger to the properties of multiple other liquids, potent potables included. Sometimes I was ‘loaned out’ to Shug and those junkets were always enlightening on several levels to say the least.

All wasn’t business in Bonlee Hardware though. Most of those traders parked their trucks behind the place, came in through the back door, and would grab a ‘drink’ as they made their way up front. Once there, they’d stand around, in the winter under the ceiling-hung stove, in the summer by the fan, and the talking would commence. While the aforementioned advice and counsel was offered up there was a goodly amount of tall-tale telling (my Momma flat-out called it Lyin’) while downing their drink and some salted peanuts or some 4-corner Nabs.

Pepsi was the favorite with the little Co-Colas a close second. Deddy always said the more frugal among that crowd went with Pepsi because you got an ounce and a half more for your dime. It did seem like he was right about that. There was wisdom passed around, everyone knew how their neighbor voted so as I recall there wasn’t really much politics talked. My Deddy made no secret of his affiliation as a democrat and a Roosevelt, New Deal one at that. Today he’d be called a Liberal - or something deemed even worse by modern MAGAs. I think there was a good deal of recollection of the hardships of the Great Depression still alive in those days as well as the struggle to defeat fascism that was World War II among the men and women of #BonleeHardware. No doubt those collective experiences reminded those folks of the power of unity over division and discord.

#OTD in 1898 “Brad’s Drink” became Pepsi-Cola “Brad’s Drink,” now Pepsi-Cola, Stirred Up (in) New Bern
 
Growing up, a friend's faher would pour a bunch of saltted peanuts into his "Co-Cola" bottle. He grew up outside Selma somewhere. A UNC grad to boot.
My grandfather had a Texaco station around the corner from our house in the mid 70s in south-central, VA. I can remember getting bottled Cokes out of the the glass front vending machine and adding peanuts to them.

I also preferred Tom's nabs to Lance nabs as a kid. The Tom's crackers were always a little flakier and maybe a little sweeter which offset the peanut butter perfectly.
 
My uncle owned a Sinclair station (remember the inflatable dinosaurs?) at the corner near my grandmother's house and he taught me to add one of those cellophane packets of Lance salted peanuts to my CoCola.
 
About 60 years ago me and a buddy skipped sunday school at the old St Thomas More church and went over to Gimghoul Castle. We sat on the patio and mixed alka seltzer and Co-cola.. We had been told it would make us "high"
 
My grandfather and i would walk down to Avey's sit on the bench out front and get a R.C. Cola and a moon-pie. Also, we would go fishing a few days a week, grab out fishing poles and start down the path. He would say "hold on boy" and walk off the path and reach down behind a tree and come back with his flask and his cigs, and off we would go. We get home with our fish and there sits grandma...."Vance you didn't give that boy and of that juice and smokes did ya"..."old woman that's crazy"...
she called me over and smelled my fingers which smelled like cigs and lit into his ass.

the things we remember...lol, smh.
 
At my father's store, I would HATE the lead-up to hog killing, i.e. the first freezing snap of the fall. Several weeks before that happened, Dad would buy a railroad car load of 100 lb bags of salt. Everyone that could be spared from the store and anyone else who couldn't hide well enough would unload that railroad car and get the bags in the store. Then we had to deliver these 100 lb bags of salt to his customers. I've got to believe the profit margin on a 100 lb bag of salt had to be near infinitesimal. But Dad always said, "My customers have to have salt. If they they can't get it from me, they will start buying it and everything else from somewhere else." And every year, towards the end of hog killing season, my Dad would run out of the 100 lb bags of salt, but usually had enough salt in smaller boxes/bags to finish out the season.

Side note: One time on the first day of hog killing, a first year teacher, not from Eastern NC, asked where about half the boys in class were. We told her that last night was the first hard frost and all the farm boys stayed home to kill hogs. She was like, "No, no, really, where are they?" Afrer refusing to accept our explanation, we resorted to our catch-all, "At the next break, go to the teacher's lounge and ask one of the older teachers."
 
BTW, I never heard of hog killing season. I was a military brat until around 11. I'm not a country boy, but certainly not metropolitan either. My brother actually worked a hog farm for a few years. I remember him telling me that Dinner Bell bought the hogs with questionable deaths. Back then I liked those cheap hot dogs. Probably came from eating whatever it was the school system called hot dogs.

This post was definitely not brought to you by Dinner Bell™.
 
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