One of the great cultural events of my teenage years was the weekly
(or more often) trek to the local watering home ... the root beer stand.
The root beer of those days, fresh from the tap, draft root beer, vintage stuff
made by Hires or A&W was spine-tinglingly delicious!! It still gives me chills
to remember how it tasted. Modern root beer pales by comparison. As you can
perhaps tell, I liked rootbeer. But, I digress. To resume, my buddies and I
would load ourselves into whatever vehicle we could cajole from our parents
and go to the root beer stand.
Once at the stand, we would order. Root beer was FIVE cents a mug, so we would each
order five mugs for starters. With three of us, that would be FIFTEEN mugs!!
It was so great to see the look on the cute little waitresses' face when we
ordered! It was hard to keep from giggling, however, we managed, as giggling
was definitely not cool (or macho), even in the fifties.
When the order was delivered, it would usually take three or four trays to hold
it all, so we each had a tray hanging on our window. We were sooo cool! Everyone else at the stand would only have one tray hanging and we'd have
three or four ... with only three or four of us in the car ... oh, the ecstacy!
Isn't it interesting to consider the quintissential masculinity of
overindulging? We used to think
a lunch of one whole barbequed chicken and a quart of 7-Up or A&W Root beer was
both satisfying and nutritious, in addition to being VERY manly! It does give
one pause...and these are the leaders of today.
The trip to the root beer stand was always topped off with the leaving of THE TIP.
In reward of her often superhuman efforts in hauling out several gallons of root
beer in heavy glass mugs in the hot, hot summer sun and putting up with
endless examples of juvenile humor (which, today, would definitely qualify
as sexual harassment). Anyway, after all of that, we would
each pitch in to express our appreciation for her concerned care. If there were
three of us the tip could amount to as much as ... three cents!! HA HAA HAAA ...
the joke was on her!! And we wondered why the carhops were flipping coins when
they saw us pull in and the one who waited on us always looked like the loser...
hmmmmmm.
After leaving the root beer stand, more often than not, we'd drive over to Alameda
Park, where there was shade and flat grassy area enough for us to spread out,
bellies grossly distended. In those days, we were all quite skinny, so we'd
take our shirts off and lie there, semi-comatose, looking like snakes that had
just swallowed eggs, trying not to barf, while our offended and overworked
digestive systems tried to cope with the fluid overload.
Occasionally, we would get on the merry-go-round and see who would puke first.
Oh, that was LOTS of fun! Normally, it would be the guy running around in a circle,
PUSHING!. Of course, being sensitive teenagers, we'd run
off any little kids who were there first, threatening them with death or dismemberment
or some like punishment. Oh, the joys of nausea and youth!
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Created 6/6/99 by Steven Streeper. © June 1999