Slurs I Didn't Know

     In Sara's store was a soda cooler, actually 2 coolers, one for quart bottles and the other for individual sized bottles of soda. I suppose there were  Coca and Pepsi Colas, but the big sellers were the flavors---birch beer, cream soda, Black Cow, Tru-Ade, orange, grape, cherry, and others. I never realized, not even to this day, that soda choice is a racial thing. I just read that a horse trainer in this state has been banned for using a racial slur as his horse's name, the name being Grape Soda.

   I worked with a family in Washington County not so long ago, agricultural workers,  of Caucasian origin by the way.  They lived in a house on a hillside with a large entry porch. That porch was filled to overflowing with bags and boxes and crates of empty bottles and cans. They referred to it as their savings account, safer than cash. When they finally returned  them for redemption, they collected $90. And that was after paying a fee of 10%. The father of the family was proud to say that there was not one single beer bottle; all of the empties were Grape Soda. He lived there with his 2 teenage sons, and that was their drink of choice. Though I had no occasion to do so, and thus never did, I could have called them the Grape Soda Family, and I don't think they would have minded.

     I think we once had a goat named Pepsi, and I know I named a favorite Bantam chick Nabisco.   Oh, Lordy.