LITTLE BALKANS CHRONICLES Treat Night and Nickel Pepsi
J.T. Knoll
I identify strongly with this episode of Gary Gleason’s ‘Boyhood Days in Pittsburg.’ I remember helping unload our station wagon after mom’s Safeway and Foodtown shopping trips – as well as the excitement of getting pop instead of Kool-Aid (the only time we had Pepsi was when mom made chili). I also slid Pepsi and NuGrape bottles along the steel rails and visited the Pepsi Cola Bottling Plant, where I got my first glimpse at the wonders of modern, high tech machinery. It was a whirling, clanking, hissing marvel of a production line with empties being first filled with syrup, then injected with carbonated water, then capped, whirled and propelled onto a conveyor toward a crew of high school boys waiting to grab them three at a time and fit them in the wooden pop cases. J.T.K.