Cokes and Memories — By Tommy Purser

I bought a Coke at a convenience store the other day. It sold for $2.57 plus tax.
I remember as a barefoot boy living in the northeastern part of Florida walking down the side of the brick street on which we lived to a neighborhood store where I could buy a Coke for 5 cents. I could either pay the 5 cents with a nickel or 5 pennies or I could get the friendly store owner to charge the Coke to an account my parents had set up in the store. My parents knew the store owner because he was one of our neighbors. He and his family lived in the back of the store, so his commute to work each morning was a matter of steps.
I can’t recall if there was a sales tax back then but I do recall that the Coke sold for a nickel, not a penny more.
I don’t remember that price lasting very long because, for most of my pre-teen years, a Coke cost a dime. Just a dime, not a sales tax penny more.
My first job came when I was still in my pre-teen years. There were no child labor laws back then, at least none that I was aware of, so at 10 years of age I began selling peanuts, popcorn and cold drinks at the ball park where a Cincinnatti Redlegs farm team played its games. Cincinnatti’s professional baseball players back then were called the Redlegs. I have no idea where that name came from but, apparently, it came into disfavor some years later and the players became known as simply The Reds, which is what they’re called today.
Cold drinks at the Palatka Redlegs’ baseball games sold for 10 cents, which was twice as much as a Coke cost at the neighborhood store across the road from the stadium. After all, the fella that ran the concession stand at the ball park had to pay me a penny for every Coke I sold, so that cut a bit into his profit margin. Plus, I suspect he had to pay some to the stadium owner, and perhaps some to the team owner ‘cause he had to get money from somewhere to pay the Redleg players.
And the team manager had to be paid as well.
The manager was a fella named Johnny Vander Meer who, some years before, etched his name into the Major League Baseball Record Book as being the only Major League player in history to ever pitch back-to-back no-hitters. I suspect that’s a record that will never be broken.
I remember Coach Vander Meer as a gruff old man who had little patience for me and my friends who lived near by and hung out at the stadium. We not only sold cold drinks, peanuts and popcorn at the games, we also took the field to shag balls during Saturday morning batting practices.
We knew every inch of that old stadium, even the lockerrooms, where we weren’t supposed to go but, sometimes, the door would be left unlocked when no one was there and we could always find a way into the stadium during off hours. Occasionally, we’d find the lockerroom door unlocked and in we’d go. We didn’t steal anything, we just liked to look. Liked to see where our favorite players hung their cleats.
It was my first experience with the smell of a lockerroom. There’s nothing else like it. And, today, that smell hasn’t changed.
The smell of sweaty clothes, towels, socks, and such is the same today as it was almost 70 years ago.
Some things just never change.
By the way, Cokes weren’t the only cold drinks we’d sell at the games. There were Nehis — orange and grape flavored — and Royal Crown Cola, aka RC Colas.
By the way, I heard once that Royal Crown was the mixer of choice for Crown Royal drinkers, but that sounds to me like some kinda joke. Never tried it myself and I believe I never will.
And that, as they say, is the name of that tune.