My mother was born and raised in the small town of Ridge Spring, SC on a large farm with a huge columned house. My older brother was born there shortly after our father went off in WWII. When I was growing up, my family would often go down for several weeks during the summers and sometimes, my father would drive back home to work for several weeks and then come back to get us at the end of the summer. For most of the summer, all we did was play outside.
Even though there was a lot of shade from the trees, there was no air conditioning and us kids would get pretty hot in the mid-afternoon after playing outside all day.
Our grandmother’s solution to this was to call out “How about a Co-Cola?” – never a “Coca Cola” and absolutely not “Pepsi”. That was the sign for us to come running to the large screened porch where there was a top-loading cooler with cold drinks inside and the bottle opener on the sides, like gas stations used to have. Everyone who was in the house at the time would come and we would all open up a bottle – the first sip of an ice-cold “Co-cola” on a hot day was wonderful.
On special occasions, a cold watermelon would be sliced and shared by “Na” – my older brother’s name for our grandmother and since he was the oldest of all the grandchildren, and the name stuck. It was a very social event and we would talk about events of the day until everyone was done. Then the kids would go back to playing outside. Who knows what the adults did!
Even though all the kids knew right where the cooler was, it would have been unthinkable to go get a Co-Cola out by ourselves, and only “Na” could declare “Co-cola” time.
What family social events do you remember from when you were growing up?
Published in Group WritingThanks for reading Quote of the Day: "How About a Co-Cola?" - Ricochet.com. Please share...!
0 Comment for "Quote of the Day: "How About a Co-Cola?" - Ricochet.com"