Summer was filled with hope and reality.

Hopes were dashed as regularly as meals were prepared.

The ladies were talking about rutabaga and asparagus recipes. Having exhausted those subjects, they moved onto the various ways that decaf coffee was just wrong. The topic of liquid refreshment caused one to mention root beer.

Youthful bipeds became good listeners.

We needed root beer. We had it coming. Not everyone gets their fair share of root beer.

Getting root beer wasn’t an undertaking to be entered into without proper planning. It was about eight miles to the A&W root beer stand. We pleaded and cajoled. I asserted that travel was enlightening.

Our mothers gave in. We were going to the A & W Root Beer stand. Cool and keen.

In 1919, in Lodi, California, Roy Allen operated a roadside stand offering a thick and creamy root beer. It was a success and he took on a partner, Frank Wright. In 1922, Allen and Wright combined their initials to name the beverage A&W root beer.

The A & W was a drive-in, not a drive-thru. Customers parked their vehicles and carhops took orders and delivered food. A frosty, glass mug of root beer washed down Papa Burgers, Mama Burgers, Teen Burgers, Baby Burgers and onion rings that were served on trays attached snugly to rolled-down car windows.

You ate in the car. You didn’t have to dress up. Stains from past meals on clothes were acceptable. That was a good thing. Keeping a kid stain-free is like trying to paint the wind.

The car was filled with a group of youngsters of an age where the mention of the planet Uranus produced uncontrollable laughter.

The children were packed into the car. Sardines had more room in a can. We were free-range young’uns as there were no seatbelts. One child was positioned in the rear deck, where he could enjoy a panoramic view of the trip.

“Where did you get Allen?” one kid had asked my mother earlier.

“Oh, he came from heaven,” replied my mother in the ultimate motherly fashion.

“I see why they threw him out.”

That opinion was probably why I was the last to get into the car.

“If there is any crying or whining, we will turn the car around and go back home.”

That said, my mother pushed me into the car and slammed the door.

On my finger. Not quite all of me had made it inside the vehicle.

It took my mind off the rock in my shoe.

I opened the door, freed my finger and quickly closed the door again.

“Who got in?” someone asked.

The car took off in a cloud of hopes.

I looked at my finger, if there was one under all the blood.

I’ve never enjoyed the sight of my own blood, but I tried to remain calm by becoming comatose.

It could have been worse. That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure how.

I held back years of tears.

I weighed the loss of blood against the gain of root beer.

I was like Ole when he and his wife went to the local airport. Ole was fascinated by helicopters and asked a pilot how much a ride would cost. “$100 each for five minutes,” replied the pilot.

“That’s too much,” said Ole and went on for 20 minutes yammering about how hard he had to work for that much money.

The pilot, grown weary of the grumbling, said, “I’ll make you a deal. If you and your wife ride for five minutes without uttering a sound, the ride will be free. But if you make a single peep, you’ll have to pay $200.”

Ole agreed. He and Lena went for a wild ride. The pilot tried ever scary, aerial trick he knew to get Ole to make a sound. After landing, the pilot said to Ole, “I congratulate you for being so quiet. You’re a brave man.”

“Maybe so,” said Ole, “But I have to tell you, I almost said something when Lena fell out.”

I decided to stick with the plan of not whining or crying.

And I did that until one of my fellow backseat travelers yelled, “Allen is bleeding on me!”

I saw Doc Olds and got stitches instead of a frosty mug of root beer.

I stopped craving root beer.

It made my finger throb.

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.