The Real Thing!

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Oh, regarding that World War II prisoner of war museum I was in the other day…. It also housed a small Coca-Cola museum! You see, the building the museum is in was once the location for the Aliceville, Alabama Coca-Cola bottling factory. It only makes sense, then, that there would be an homage to the origins of the building included! It isn’t very big, but it’s pretty darn fascinating. It includes the machine that filled the Coke bottles as well as the machine that washed and sterilized the bottles that had been returned. That’s what the two photos are of (assembly line on the left, washer on the right). And now…to bore you to tears!!! Ha, you thought I could only do this with music! My fellow old fogeys will back me up on this. Soft drinks used to be purchased in glass bottles, and you were charged a deposit on the bottles. When you brought the bottles back, you got the money back (or credited to your next purchase of bottles). There was something pretty unique to Coke bottles, beside the shape. That shape was known as the “hobble skirt” bottle, named after a “fashion trend” in the early 1910s that thankfully faded quickly. (Ladies, have a look and you’ll be glad, too!) On the bottom of the Coke bottles you would find the name of the city (or, in Aliceville’s case, town) where the Coke was bottled…or a generic city where the bottle was made. Believe me, back in my innocent youth, it was fun to turn an empty Coke bottle upside down and see what city was stamped on it! All of that is long gone, of course, but going through that small Coke bottling plant brought that all back to me. And yes, they did have bottles there marked “Aliceville, AL.” Back when Coke was “the real thing.”