Thursday, March 13, 2008

Ben and Michael's Stash


Dad thought it a good idea to post on mom's blog, the story of our stash during the trip to Jeff' City:
Let me start out by stating the obvious(/^\see picture above/^\). I am addicted to glass bottled sodas. I, especially, enjoy the ones made with pure cane sugar. Dad shares this addiction to an extent, with our favorite drinks being Root Beer and Birch Beer.

Last year, on this same trip, as we were going to a conservation area near Columbia, we stopped at a little country gas station/store and found a glass bottled root beer that neither of us had tried, called Fitz's. So naturally, we bought two bottles of it to try. It looked more or less like any other commercial root beer. As we got into the car and drove away, however, we popped the caps off and took a swig. We were amazed at just how good this root beer really was. It was light bodied yet, had a thick rooty flavor, and it had the complexities of heavy fruit notes, with slight herbiness and very little wintergreen notes. After drinking these and leaving the area for Columbia, we headed to a pizza place we had read about on pizzatherapy.com called "Shakespeare's." To our surprise, we encountered the same root beer, on draught at this place. It had a different taste than it did in the bottle obviously, but we fell in love with our new found beverage even more.
That brings us to this trip. On our free Saturday, when mom had classes all day. We journeyed out to the same places in hopes of relocating our favorite drink. The store we visited last year, however, only had Fitz's cream soda and Hank's Gourmet Sodas orange cream soda, which neither of us had tried. We bought them eagerly but were sorely disappointed to not find root beer. Hoping that Shakespeare's might have some bottles as well as their draught, we went back. They had it only on draught. We couldn't find our root beer bottled, though. We bought Fitz's Grape, Ginger Ale, and Orange, but none of these were a consolation for the grail root beer. We headed to Walmart hoping that it would be carried there, being a local drink. No luck. Since we had our GPS with us, we used the search function to look for health food stores and general stores, which are both typically good places to buy glass bottle drinks. After drawing a blank at a different grocery store, a liquor store, and a health food store, we gave up and decided to head back to Jeff' City with our disappointing loot. As we got back on one of the main highways to get to the interstate, we spotted a place that I had seen on the GPS's search results. Since it was right across the street, we took a gamble and went in. On our left, as we entered the small grocery store, we found a decent sized soda area resembling one of those super bowl stash areas at Walmart. It had all of the commercial, high-fructose corn syrup drinks that we've come to know and hate. So we went to the soda isle and jackpot! We found Boylan's Creamy Red Birch Beer, near the top of my most wanted list. We got a four-pack and walked to the front check out, almost consoled for our deprivation of Fitz's. As I was waiting at checking out, Dad, not being satisfied with the soda isle, walked down the rows checking for any stragglers. He came and told me to come over to the middle isle. We found a small section of glass bottled "nirvana". Not only did they have Fitz's root beer and all of their other products, but they had Lost Trail root beer and sarsaparilla, Hank's Gourmet root beer, Abita root beer, Boylan's ginger ale and seltzer, plus many others we didn't buy! We ended up buying about $20 worth of soda, but it was well worth it, at 99 cents a pop. And as you can see, they will make a great addition to my collection of bottles.
-Ben Meadors

3 comments:

SSK* said...

I like BOTH stashes!!! Fitz's Root Beer while knitting -- now that's a GREAT combination. Do the boys share???

Kay said...

Yes, the boys share. They bought me a couple of the Diet Fitz's root beer. That way, I can splurge on the ice cream for a root beer float. I do take a small sip of all the flavor.
I save all my spare calories for dark Dove chocolate!

Autumn said...

you know they sell Boylan's at Java Roasting Co. here in Little Rock?