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56
summer
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fal l
watched Elmer or his twin brother whip one up, I was hooked. He went
down the row and with a quick short jab hit each spout with the heel
of his palm, shooting each syrup available – Coke, chocolate, cherry,
lemon, vanilla, and strawberry – into the tall fountain glass, then the
carbonated water, a swizzle with the long chrome fountain spoon, and
you had something that was reddish-brown. Despite the color, however,
the complex zing of that drink was something else! Half of it of course
was the ritual and attenuated ceremony of the drink. It said you were
someone now in the world, knew what you were doing. Especially
our last year as 8
th
-graders, when we played a home game in football,
baseball, or basketball against one of the other three Catholic schools
in town, and, if we won, we would walk down East Valley or ride bikes
and arrive at the soda fountain, drinking companions on each arm, and
seat ourselves at the bar ordering vanilla Cokes, chocolate Cokes, and
Suicides. Our school league was organized and refereed, and we had old
worn-out jerseys, but all together it seemed official and halfway famous
in our eyes.
I remember after an especially close game, which we pulled out
with a last-minute “gunner-reverse” touchdown play, I celebrated with
two or three Suicides as we sat on our stools and cooled off late in the
afternoon, feeling on top of the world, as the cliché then had it.
There was another world out there, sure we knew that; you
graduated and went on to high school somewhere in town. But the
actuality of that did not really register for those years we were there. We
rarely saw the older kids who graduated again; we were all we knew and
cared about. One classmate, Greg Berblinger, had an older brother who
graduated a year earlier and who showed up at the soda fountain one day
as a bunch of us clustered outside to see who had any money for candy,
who might be persuaded to share. We barely remembered Greg’s brother
and felt it was a bit strange, wondered what he was doing; surely he
didn’t belong here now?
Living Forever
He must have just missed hanging out after school, going to the soda
fountain; his pals had to be all off somewhere else. He reached into his
pocket and pulled out a nickel, held it up above our heads and offered it
to us, said he just wanted to see what we would buy with it. That didn’t
sound quite right to us but three or four of us with no money that day
decided in no time to take it. What was the catch? All we had to do was
show him what we bought, he said. We huddled, took the nickel and hit
the rack with the BIG HUNKs, a long bar of nougat with nuts that would
divide up into four or five pieces. We paid Pops and came out and showed
him our selection; he approved and we divvied it up. He did not ask for
a piece, and just kind of sadly looked at us then pushed off on his bike. I
didn’t get it then: who would give up a nickel to kids he didn’t know? But
we asked few questions as we attended to the marginal sugar loading to
which we were treated that day.
Later, it was clear that Greg’s brother must have missed his life as he
knew it, the places in which he lived it. It was worth his only nickel that
day to try and re-live a bit of it. But that event from a year or so earlier
made no impression on me and my pals as we sat there that last autumn
of 1960 at probably the last soda fountain in the world.
Only a year or so later, riding home from high school, we would
notice that the little grocery and soda fountain were gone, that some
new expensive clothing stores were being built on the prime real estate.
But for the moment, for that afternoon, all of my consciousness was
taken up with my second or third Suicide as I luxuriated in the rush
and buzz of my blood, in our delicious lives, in the light of our days
humming through the oaks and eucalyptus with a feeling that we were
going to live forever.
I
remember after an
especially close
game, which we pulled out with
a last-minute “gunner-reverse”
touchdown play, I celebrated
with two or three Suicides as we
sat on our stools and cooled off
late in the afternoon...
M M
ontecito
emories