By Jim Hagarty
There are many ways of knowing your advancing years are bringing you firmly into the territory that could be called Senior Land.
Looking in the mirror is one way.
Another way is to go into shops and restaurants in your hometown and see displayed there memorabilia from a long-gone soda pop company that you once drove truck for.
Twice in the past two weeks I have seen Kist Beverages signs – one in a shop and last night in a restaurant.
Forty-five years ago I spent a summer lugging Kist pop into stores and restaurants. Hardest job I ever had. Glass bottles, no plastic. And wooden cases, no plastic or cardboard. No cans.
Hauling those cases up and down the rickety steps of some century-old small-town stores put a muscle or two on my arms and a suicidal thought or three in my brain. In some of those basements, I had to dodge the rats to find a place to set down the cases.
Kist was a small-town bottler and yet it was popular and I was told to erect a fancy display in the grocery stores I went into. I would go back the following week to find my display had been disassembled and tossed in a back room. An even fancier display of Coke or Pepsi products would be in its place. It was a very competitive field.
I shared some of this information with the young clerk in the store where I saw the sign the first time. She looked as interested as she might have been had I been explaining to her the correct and incorrect ways to lance a boil.
And don’t even get me started on antique shops.
When half the stuff in those shops are things you had in your home growing up, you know the autumn of your life is on the horizon. A few months ago I toured an antique shop with my daughter. I was able to explain to her what most of the items were that we came across in the store. She was mystified by most of the items.
My Dad, a lifelong farmer, always said there is no such thing as antiques, just old furniture. Maybe he was right but I kind of wish I still had some of our old furniture to sell to antique lovers. Not to put them down, but apparently they will buy anything.
Even old pop company signs.
