By Jim Hagarty
2017
I ordered my meal in the restaurant and asked for a Coke. I expected a glass of pop but instead, the waitress delivered my order in an old-fashioned glass Coke bottle, a little skinnier than in the old days, but close enough. OMG, the clouds had parted and Heaven shone down upon me.
I have rattled on and on for decades about how Coke (or any pop) out of a can or plastic bottle tastes nothing like the Coke of my youth which came only in glass bottles. Now that was when a Coke was a Coke! I couldn’t wait to lift this miracle to my lips and treat my taste buds to something they had been deprived of for so long.
I raised the bottle, and let the first swig trickle down my throat like shallow creek water over rocks after a winter’s thaw. Glug and then a couple of more glugs. Well, half in tears and full of emotion, I am here to report that this beautifully bottled Coke seemed to me to taste no different than the stuff that comes in cans and plastic containers. It was like finding out Paul McCartney really did die some time in the sixties and was replaced by a look-a-like. Or that the moon landing was staged somewhere in Arizona.
How could this possibly be? I am despondent. It is a cruel world. I was raised on the bottle. Now nothing makes sense any more.
