Glass Bottles

Today’s Perfect Moment is a cool drink of root beer from a glass bottle. Pretty simple really, but full of touchstones for me.

I found this bottle at the Dollar Tree. The Dollar Tree is running a distant second to Dollarama in the Canadian dollar store wars.  I personally don’t have a favourite, but for a time the Dollar Tree was the only place to get cherry coke–now I can’t get it anywhere unless I want the diet or zero version.

I like root beer. I know some of you out there do not, but I do.  Several people in my life have likened it to medicine.  My students have gone so far as to call it akin to drinking Vicks vap-o-rub.  I hardly think that is accurate, but if they don’t want to drink it, that means there is more for me.

As a child, whenever I went on school trips and had to take my lunch, my Mom would buy me Hires Draft root beer. I remember the can well.

Although I purchased this at the dollar store, it cost $1.25 plus tax. Was that a bargain?  No.  I could probably have bought a two litre plastic bottle for almost the same price.  At the very least, I probably could have bought three or four cans.  However, there is nothing better than drinking from a glass bottle***.  Imagine if you had to drink beer from a plastic bottle.  I can’t do it often, but once in a while, it is a worthy indulgence.

I first encountered Dad’s root beer in Japan.  After months of not seeing it, I came across the cans in a store in Kyoto.  I bought a bunch of them and lugged them around from temple to temple and shrine to shrine until I got home and got them cooled down.  Much like this purchase, they weren’t cheap–probably 100yen or 120yen–but every now and then I needed an indulgence.

I decided to put up both the French and English labels.  I wonder why they didn’t translate the expression old fashioned.  Also, once in a McDonalds somewhere between Quebec City and Montreal, I asked for racinette and nobody understood me.  One kind person said “Root beer n’est ce pas?”  Obviously I need to work on my French.

***Probably some people enjoy drinking from a funnel–but that’s another story.