You don't have to drink so much water, you know

But you're probably not drinking enough grape soda.

No one carried water bottles around when I was growing up. You were thirsty, you turned on a garden hose. If you were out and around, you looked for a fountain. If none of these were available, you waited. No one’s kidneys seized up and no one passed out. The idea of carrying water around sounded like a relic from the days when men crossed the plains on horseback, conserving the last few drops from a leather bag while a bird cawed in the distance and a single guitar chord strummed ominously. Some people don’t have their water bottle, they feel like the Mummy trying to throw up a sack of straw, I guess, but I’m just not a thirsty guy.

I do, however, enjoy a cold tall glass of flavored water on a hot July day. I stopped buying canned water - supposedly it has flavor, but it’s just a citrusy fizzy frisson. You can’t tell what the flavor is, because everything has to be a combination of two flavors these days. Strawberry-Kiwi. Banana-Plum. Elderberry-Sirloin. Peach-Teriyaki. Instead of wasteful cans with indistinct duality, I use those little plastic vials of concentrated flavor you squirt over the ice before you add the water. I don’t recommend the Cherry, because for a second you think someone came up behind you and slit your throat. The other day I was looking for a new flavor at the store, and saw a little bottle labeled ARCTIC GRAPE.

I have no idea what this means. There are no grapes in the Arctic. Does that mean it has a cool, refreshing taste one associates with the deadly, bone-aching cold of the barren expanse at the bottom of the earth? I squirted some over the ice, and discovered it had a blueish tinge. Ah: like your fingers in the Arctic, if unprotected? Was that it? Added water, swirled it around, and took a sip.

It transported me back sixty years. It was summer, I was at the park, and I’d been handed a cold can of grape soda.

We weren’t a pop family. The dads and uncles drank beer. The moms and aunts drank iced tea. The kids got Shasta on family gatherings, because it was cheap. You couldn’t fish a can out of the cooler and pull back the tab - oh, no. You needed this, which is one of my most prized possessions.

What a slogan. I wonder if anyone ever thought of Shasta la vista, baby. It was . . . okay, but I have a fond memory of the grape. One day, though, you’d turn your back on it. Your older cousins drank cola. Grape was for kids. Grape was juice. If you wanted respect in this world you’d reach for the reddish-brown Shasta Cola can, and hope the cousins noticed. Hey, look who’s all grown up! Want to come upstairs and listen to a record by the Animals? The singer says “damn” twice! You’d arrived.

The most significant pop memory of my life was the day I tried Mountain Dew. My father had a gas station, and that meant he had a pop machine. It was necessary, not just for patrons, but the greasemonkeys. You’ve no idea how hot and miserable the lubrication bay of a gas station could be on a July afternoon, and the guys in the bays hoisting cars up and finding around in the oily recesses of a balky Buick wore polyester Unitag coveralls that didn’t exactly breathe. So they’d take a break and get a bottle out of the machine. One day they were excited, because there was a new flavor. They’d heard about it. They’d seen ads. That hillbilly pop. I asked my dad if I could have one, and he spotted me a coin. You’ve no idea how different it tasted. It had a secret ingredient. It was like discovering a new color, or hearing a chord from a Phrygian mode. Instant hit. And Shasta couldn’t copy it. It was . . . Seven-up plus Squirt, plus, who knows, unicorn spittle or something. Amazing.

It would be my most specific pop memory for years, until I found myself working down South as a seed salesman for Northrup King in the summer of 1979. I drove the highways and backroads in an unairconditioned van, stopping at small towns and suburban grocery stores, taking orders and picking up the wire racks they no longer needed. In one hamlet I pulled over for gas. Blazing day. There was one of the old pop coolers, the chest type where you’d slide the bottle down a metal trench line to an opening. They had Nehi. I’d never had a Nehi. I’d only heard of it from M*A*S*H, as it was Radar O’Reilly’s favorite beverage. Well, when in Rome, Georgia, etc. Popped the cap on the bottle opener, and took a sip.

Well.

You look back on your life and you find the moments that mattered, the instances of joy and despair, the the triumphs, the cruel losses and reversals, and you can gauge the depth and breadth of your story by these zenith and troughs. If they flash before your eyes when the time comes, I hope my final recollections includes the memory of leaning against an old Coke machine at a gas station somewhere in the South, taking the first draught of that Grape Nehi, pausing to marvel at this miraculous ichor, then draining it in two ecstatic gulps. It was a strange, lonely summer, but I was glad to be alive and on the road in America, infused again with glorious grape.

I’ve never had it since. Perhaps the rivers of heaven flow with grape Nehi. I’m no theologian, but I’m certain it’s not Lemon-Lime Shasta.