Pop goes the vendor
Written by Dan
Pop. Soda. Coke. Devil's water. Whatever you call it, it's mmm, mmm good. Nothing takes the bite out of a 111 degree day (that was the heat index in St. Louis at 1:00 PM today) like a good ole teeth-numbing, cavity-enthusing, headache-causing, stool-darkening glass of fizzy POP. That's right, I called it pop, and I bet between 40% to 50% of the rest of you do too. Missouri is one of the few states where the soda / pop war is still being fought... vehemently.
With the run-up to the election, you find a lot of people asking similar questions: republican or democrat, was invading Iraq right or wrong, should we keep jobs in America or send them to India, is stem cell research moral... but here in Missouri you're more likely to hear:
Guy 1 - (lifts glass to the sky) Hey you!
Guy 2 - Who, me?
Guy 1 - Yeah. What's this called? (nods his head towards the skyward glass)
Guy 2 - Uh, nodding your head towards a skyward glass.
Guy 1 - No. I mean, what's the liquid called within my skyward glass?
Guy 2 - I don't know. I can't see it way up there.
Guy 1 - Oh. Sorry. (lowers glass) Look. What is it?
Guy 2 - Hmmm, it's dark. Fizzy. (tastes the concoction) Mmm, that's teeth-numbingly refreshing! It has to be soda!
Guy 1 - You bastard! (smashes the glass over guy 2's head) It's pop! POP! Say it!
Guy 2 - Never! AHHHHHH!
Missouri has an isogloss that meanders all throughout the state, separating the good pop people from the not-so-good soda people... and then there's the hillbillies who only wear one-strap overalls and spend their days smoking corn cob pipes and drinking moonshine from a brown jug marked XXX. You know the ones. They don't have a word for pop, just a dazzlingly complex series of grunts and head nods that indicate their desire for a sugary sodey (SO-dee) pop.
Here's an additional list of words that you may or may not say rightly or wrongly:
vacuum (wrong) / sweeper (right)
end of the bread loaf (wrong) / the heel (right)
breakfast, lunch, or dinner (wrong) / supper (right)
tornado (wrong) / brown, weird lookin' cloud (right)
see-saw (wrong) / teeter-totter (right)
pail (wrong) / bucket (right)
sack (wrong) / bag (right)
sloppy joes (wrong) / yum-yums (right)
The list could go on and on, but the real reason for this post was not to prove that everything I say is right, but to express my disgust with the regional Coke distributor - COKE being the brand-specific beverage, not the non-specific pop name... you hear me, Texas. I've called this guy at least 15 times in the last month and he will NOT call me back. I contacted the good people at Fitz's Root Beer Company here in St. Louis, and they responded to me within in minutes. Not weeks, not days, not even hours... minutes. Specifically - 18 minutes. Very impressive.
In a perfect world, we'd serve all kinds of specialty and domestic pops at our Cinebar. If someone doesn't want to try a non-traditional pop, I think we should have a few of the old standards on hand to insure the patron's satisfaction (i.e. Coke, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, etc.). We may end up buying all of our pop through a wholesale grocer, which would mean we could serve Pepsi and Coke products, along with a whole bevy of specialty brands, without worrying about ruffling our distributor's feathers. Personally, I love Dr. Pepper, and I don't know what I'd do if I had it readily available to me in syrup form.
For immediate release:
July 13th, 2005
Midwestburg, USA
A young man was found dead late last night in what looks to be another pop-induced overdose, the third such incident in under two months. Witnesses say that the co-owner of The Moxie, a Midwestburg art-house theater known for its unique concession items and one-of-a-kind atmosphere, was drinking heavily as Tuesday night's films
drew to a close.
"Yeah, he was standing over there in the corner slurping on a bag of Dr. Pepper syrup. [His wife, Nicole] tried to grab it away from him by offering some yum-yums, but he wouldn't give it up. He was blabbering on about something or the other... didn't get the last heel at supper, or something like that. I don't know, I couldn't hear him anymore."
Law officers are afraid that the incident may incite another barrage of soda / pop related violence throughout the Midwestburg metropolitan area, and urge all citizens to remain silent if asked which linguistic variation they prefer. "It's pretty obvious that this never would've happened had people not been calling it soda," said Bobby Joe Rawlings, a local corn pipe vendor. "It's just sad. Real, real sad."