Coca-Cola news sparked memories

News that Jay County’s Coca-Cola production facility will be closing hit home.

It also prompted a flood of memories:

•When I was about 7 years old and in second grade, I discovered that the handles on the drawers in our kitchen cabinets could double as an opener for a Coke bottle. They worked perfectly. But my mother soon noticed that the popping of the bottle cap also left a discernible dent in the front of her kitchen cabinets. And I was quickly identified as the perpetrator of the damage. That ended that.

•It was always a little exciting to get a bottle from an exotic location like, say, Union City. As everyone above a certain age knows, Coca-Cola bottles during the first half of the 20th century bore the name of the original bottling plant on the bottom of the green glass bottle. Because folks moved around, bottles that originated in one location might eventually end up in another. There, they’d be cleaned, sanitized and recycled, then filled with another 6.5 ounces of the pause that refreshes.

•I was probably about 10 years old before I encountered the terms “soda” or “pop.” When you grow up in a Coke town, all soft drinks are Coke until you learn otherwise. “What kind of Coke do you want?” “How about a Seven-Up?” “Sounds good.”

•My understanding is that the original bottling plant in Portland was just west of the Hood Building, where The Commercial Review has its offices and both The CR and The News and Sun are printed. The building has been gone for more than 40 years. Several years ago, the company re-paved the spot where the bottling plant had been located. That involved some excavation, and the excavation turned into a bit of soft drink archaeology. Apparently, off-brand bottles were routinely pitched out the back door. Some of them were intact, and a few are still at the newspaper office. Others made their way to local antique stores.

•One Coke memory always prompts a bit of guilt. In a childhood caper I have written about before in this space, some of my fellow hooligans in the neighborhood and I once boosted a case of warm Coca-Cola from a family’s garage. Taking it to our makeshift “hideout,” it suddenly occurred to us that we needed to get rid of the evidence of our petty theft. So we drank it. All of it. Warm. Maybe even hot on a summer afternoon. No better punishment could have been devised.

•Coke machines are fine, but there was nothing like a Coke cooler. The Mobil station located where Cook’s Nursery and Trim now operates had the best. Bottles of Coca-Cola were swimming in icy cold water. You had to reach in and guide the wet, cold bottle of refreshment through a maze to get to its exit. A delight.

•Given today’s emphasis on food security at places like Coca-Cola and Tyson Mexican Original, it’s remarkable to think back on a childhood field trip through the Portland bottling plant when it was located on Arch Street in what is now the home of Museum of the Soldier. Hands down, it was the coolest field trip ever.

•By the 1970s and 1980s, Coke was outgrowing the Arch Street building. Owner/patriarch Bob Delauter kept hinting at plans for a new plant, and I kept pestering him to submit to an interview so I could do a story for the paper. He kept putting me off. What he didn’t want, he explained, was to go public with his plans then have some unforeseen problem crop up that scuttled things. I understood, but I still kept after him. Finally he relented. We did the interview. I wrote the story. The paper published it. Then — exactly as he had feared — there was a speed bump and the plans were shelved.

•At least that story was written. There was one I wanted to do that was nixed by the Coca-Cola powers that be. About 2010, I got wind of the fact that the Jay County Coke plant was so team-oriented and so cross-trained that it didn’t really need a plant manager. Think about that for a second: A production facility that knows what it is doing, works consistently as a team, fills in for one another and still hits the top quality marks, all without someone designated as “the boss.” It would be one heck of a story, a national story as far as I was concerned. But there would be no green light. And without corporate cooperation, business stories have a tendency to die on the vine. Still, I was proud that when the plant was named North American Profit Team of the Year for 2012, they invited me to the celebration. Not the mayor. Not the Chamber of Commerce. Not Jay County Development Corporation. Just a guy who messed up his mother’s kitchen cabinets opening Coke bottles after school when he was 7 years old.