Richard Hyatt: The pause that refreshes

My sainted Baptist mama secretly spiked her fruit punch with shots from a bottle of Old Grand-Dad she stashed under the sink, but she considered drinking Pepsi a mortal sin.

We were a Coca-Cola family in a Coca-Cola town. Yankee carpetbaggers who didn't cook their greens with fatback or know all the verses to "Amazing Grace" had introduced Pepsi. Coke was nectar of the gods rivaled only by a mother's milk.

Grade school classes in Atlanta toured the bottling plant and every September we got a red No. 2 pencil with the Coke logo on the side. For fun we checked the bottom of 6-ounce bottles and made friendly wagers on whose drink was bottled farther away.

The influence of Coke was even greater when I moved to Columbus, the place where the cola wars were first declared.

Dr. John Pemberton, the druggist who concocted the original formula, lived here and some say his magic was first performed here, not in Atlanta.

Influential businessman W.C. Bradley was vital to the early days of Coke, and he was the company's first board chairman. His descendants, D. Abbott Turner and Bill Turner, were also board members, and the fortunes that family made with soft drink stock were generously reinvested in the Columbus we know today.

So given past connections, I was shocked that you couldn't buy a cold Coke at the Columbus Ice Rink. As John Belushi screamed on a Saturday Night Live skit, "No Coke! Pepsi."

My 6-year-old wanted a Dr. Pepper but would settle for a Sprite. Both are Coke products and they weren't on the menu.

Ross Horner ain't from around here, but the director of the Columbus Civic Center knows his history. "When people say give me a Coke, they sometimes mean give me a Mountain Dew," he says.

In the big arena he offers Coke and Pepsi products, and his only goal is not to sell a bad product. He says the corporate warfare has greatly subsided and that sometimes you can sell the traditional adversaries in the same vending machine.

Maybe so, but people like me still care. I've spent most of my life avoiding the taste of Pepsi, and I don't intend to change. I want my Coke, and around here I'm not alone. To me, it will always be the pause that refreshes.

-- Richard Hyatt is an independent correspondent. Reach him at hyatt31906@knology.net.

This story was originally published January 2, 2016 at 10:27 PM with the headline "Richard Hyatt: The pause that refreshes ."