This Pastime, given the almost absolute absence of glass bottles from the soda industry to plastic, has since faded into obscurity.
It was always about this time of year, with the spring-like temperatures that as a kid I found myself, trying to earn a little bit of cash.
This was before in the 8th grade when basketball Coach George Wayne Jones, a history teacher, somehow nominated me to editor Robert L. Newton Jr., of the Eagle Democrat as a possible “printer’s devil,” to work after school at the Eagle.
Before my “Eagle Days,” like a lot of young pre-teen and teenage boys, I had a good bit of time on my hands before yard mowing season began.
So, I went up and down the roadways both inside Warren and out on the county roads in search of discarded, glass soda bottles. We called them all “coke” bottles back then – with a lowercase “c” so that included all the major brands and some revered local brands of soda pop – such as Grapette (in nearby Camden) Pop Cola (from over in Mississippi) and others.
The bottles, back then, when consumed when driving, were (sad to say) simply flung out the windows of the vehicles and ended up in the ditches along the way.
Now only those bottles which were not cracked, broken or chipped, could be “turned in,” or “reclaimed” at the local grocery stores – such as the Kroger Store or the Mad Butcher both just off downtown Warren. Other smaller grocery stores, such as Reynold’s Supermarket in West Warren and the country stores like Poole’s Grocery (out on the Old Camden Road) or Robert and Ruth Ferrell’s Store out on what was then Highway 15 – might, on occasion, redeem some empty soda bottles for cash.
And that was the magic of bottle hunting in the ditches and along the byways of the state highways – you could turn a six-pack of empty bottles in for as much as 12-18 cents and sometimes if the need was great you might get as much as 25 cents per six pack of bottles.
All the stores had a “bottle corral” usually in their parking lot near the loading dock. The various collection of the empty bottles started inside the store with patrons bringing back a six-pack of empty bottles to purchase a new six pack of bottled drinks.
The savings to the purchaser was about 25 cents over not having bottles to “trade-in” at the cash register.
These empties, exchanged at the checkout counter, were usually placed into an empty shopping cart right up at the front of the store. Several times a day, one of the stockers would take a break from restocking the shelves to wheel out the cart full of empties to the “corral” outside in the parking lot.
When the various soda pop companies, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, 7-Up, Dr. Pepper, Diet Rite, R.C. Cola (Royale Crown) or Grapette rolled in with new bottles for the store sales, the truck driver or his assistant, gathered up the returned bottles from the store. There was some kind of financial incentive to be rebated back to the store for the amount of “empties,” picked up from the store by the truck driver.
The soda company’s truck was loaded back up with these “empties,” so when the truck got back to the company warehouse in Monticello, Camden or Pine Bluff, the empties were off loaded.
The glassware of the soda industry was washed, and reused.
The financial model theory of the day was that the average soda pop bottle could, in theory, be washed and reused for at least a year – 52 times or more.
In reality, I doubt that theory stood up to the test of time.
Often back in the day, the bottle capping machines caused the glass bottles, as thick as they were, to crack or shatter. And dropping a six pack of filled glass bottles – often but not always – saw at least one of them shatter, spraying sticky, sugary sweet soda everywhere.
But I well remember collecting more than $20 on occasion in empty soda pop bottles to be “returned” for cash.
At 2 cents a bottle, well that is a Pastime that not only took several hours of boredom off my schedule as padded by often patched blue jean pockets with folding money.
And that is a Pastime that often resulted in me sitting in a Friday night show at the Pastime and yes, having enough money for popcorn and a fountain drink while the theater darkened and the show began.