Through the Looking Glass

I ordered my meal in the restaurant and asked for a Coke. I expected a glass of pop but instead, the waitress delivered my order in an old-fashioned glass Coke bottle, a little skinnier than in the old days, but close enough.

OMG, the clouds had parted and Heaven shone down upon me.

I have rattled on and on for decades about how Coke (or any pop) out of a can or plastic bottle tastes nothing like the Coke of my youth which came only in glass bottles. Now that was when a Coke was a Coke!

I couldn’t wait to lift this miracle to my lips and treat my taste buds to something they had been deprived of for so long. I raised the bottle, and let the first swig trickle down my throat like shallow creek water over rocks after a winter’s thaw.

Glug and then a couple of more glugs.

Well, half in tears and full of emotion, I am here to report that this beautifully bottled Coke seemed to me to taste no different than the stuff that comes in cans and plastic containers.

It was like finding out Paul McCartney really did die some time in the sixties and was replaced by a look-a-like. Or that the moon landing was staged somewhere in Arizona.

How could this possibly be? I am despondent. It is a cruel world.

I was raised on the bottle. Now nothing makes sense any more.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.