Tuesday, March 14, 2006

The Pop Shoppe

A few weeks ago at our weekly Tuesday night dinners in Maxville, it was brought to my attention that the Pop Shoppe still exists. I had no clue.

For those of you not familiar with the Shoppe, it was a store that sold different flavours of pop in bottles. It doesn't sound that great but it was....I use to love to go to The Pop Shoppe. I can remember when I was a child, I would get great pleasure out of going to the Pop Shoppe with my Dad, carefully choosing the flavours I wanted. My sister and I were into the good flavours like Black Cherry & Cream Soda, but my dad stuck to regular old Cola. (I now realize why Cola was such a popular hit with him as Cream Soda and Rum probably didn't go that well together).

The best part about the Pop Shoppe was that you saved your bottles and once your case was empty you brought them back to the Shoppe and again went through the process of choosing your next case. It was a blast....but once the The Pop Shoppe closed down in Sault Ste. Marie, I just thought that it had closed down all together across Canada (just a small town girl living in a small town world - I know).

The other night P located the Pop Shoppe in Cornwall and brought me home two Cream Soda and a Black Cherry. I was pretty pumped about the whole situation. Each bottle still requires a bottle opener -- and the bottles look exactly the same. We cracked the Black Cherry and the memories came flooding back...ahhhhhhhhhh the taste was the same as 15 years ago. I wasn't long enjoying the first sip when P told me it would be the last one I would enjoy as each bottle sold for a whopping two dollars a piece - can you believe it - that's highway robbery. Has inflation really had that much affect on the production of Pop Shoppe pop? I guess some childhood memories come with a price attached to them, but for me two bucks is well worth the taste of an ice cold black cherry!