Blue Highways: Holliston, Massachusetts

Unfolding the Map

We're in Holliston!  Why don't we wander over to the store and get a couple of Moxie's and some food so that we can wander with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) in the local graveyard.  Speaking of colas, I apparently have a few things to write about them.  Their history is pretty interesting.  To see where we are ingesting all that carbonation and sugar, pull your pop-top and check out the map.

Book Quote

"At Holliston, I stopped and took a sandwich and a bottle of Moxie (once advertised as 'the only harmless nerve food known that can recover loss of manhood, imbecility and helplessness') into the old town burial ground and ate lunch while I walked and read the slanting slate tombstones.  There were carved urns, hourglasses, and weeping willows; among the mors vincit omnia sentiments were some well-cut death's-heads and angels of redemption.  Often it's hard to tell the difference because the death's heads evolved into angels, the angels into cherubs, the cherubs into portraits of the deceased."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 4

Downtown Holliston, Massachusetts. Photo at the blog of Claudette Miller, buyer and broker, at Active Rain.com. Click on photo to go to host page.

Holliston, Massachusetts

I've never had a Moxie, though I would like to.  One of the most interesting stories of America, I think, is how all around the same time a variety of beverages were born that employed various natural extracts in their recipes to promote health, vitality and vigor.

Back in the day, soft drinks were considered elixirs and curatives.  Carbonated water was considered good for health, and soft drink companies added ingredients to bolster the health effects.  Coca-Cola, for instance, was named after the coca alkaloid extract used in its recipe.  After cocaine was declared illegal in the US, the alkaloid was removed but the use of coca leaf continued to be part of Coca-Cola's recipe.  Pepsi Cola mixed carbonated water with a digestive enzyme, pepsin, and kola nuts.  Dr. Pepper was sold as a brain tonic, and energizer.

To see this concentration on health, take for example some early Coca-Cola slogans:  "Coca-Cola Revives and Sustains." (1905)  "The Great National Temperance Beverage." (1906)  "The Hit That Saves the Day!" (1920) "Pure as Sunlight!" (1927). 

Or how about Pepsi's implications of health and vigor in its slogans?  "Delicious and Healthful." (1905) "More Bounce to the Ounce." (1950). 

7-Up used a mood stabilizer, lithium, in its recipe until it was prohibited by law in 1948.  It's slogan was "You Like It, It Likes You" and a doctor's testimonial claimed that 7-Up gave its drinkers "an abundance of energy, enthusiasm, a clear complexion, lustrous hair, and shining eyes."

Here's some of Dr. Pepper's slogans: "Drink a Bite to Eat at 10, 2, and 4 o'clock." (1920s-40s)  "When You Drink a Dr. Pepper You Drink a Bite to Eat." (1939)

Moxie, which LHM references above, claimed that it could help relieve the effects of "paralysis, softening of the brain, nervousness, and insomnia."  It claimed its main ingredient came from a rare South American plant with healing properties.  It currently contains ingredients of gentian root, which has been used as an herbal remedy for digestive disorders in South America.  The early popularity of the cola contributed to the English language.  One has "moxie" if one is energetic and youthful, as in "Boy, I like her moxie!" or "He's got a lot of moxie!"  It has the distinction of being the first mass-marketed American soft drink.

Of course, today this sounds like the patent medicine scams that were going on at roughly the same time that colas were coming into prominence as health aids.  Patent medicines promised to cure and bring about health, but usually didn't work and sometimes had deleterious health effects.  Even those that delivered on their promises did so with dangerous ingredients.  Syrups sold by salesmen across rural and urban areas of America, and in Sears catalogs as well, promised to cure whooping cough, revitalize bodily systems, relieve constipation and restore health to bowels, kidneys and liver.  Common ingredients used in such medicines and promoted as healthy were alcohol, radium, radon, mercury, and arsenic.  Medicines with opium and morphine were promoted as a way to soothe crying babies.  Herbs considered "abortifacients" were often promoted as being healthy to pregnant women.  Jolts of electricity were used to restore health and vigor, and even cure crippled people.  It is telling that many of the modern pharmaceutical companies began as manufacturers, promoters and sellers of patent medicines, and that the Food and Drug Administration, one of those government agencies so maligned by those on the right side of the political spectrum, was created in order to regulate such companies from making false claims and harming public health.

Of course, now we know that Coke, Pepsi, and other soft drinks can be bad for health because of their high sugar content.  Overconsumption of sugar can, of course, lead to obesity and a risk of diabetes.  New York City has recently gone so far as to impose penalties on restaurants that serve soft drinks in containers over 16 ounces.  Yet there is often still a marketing around the supposed health benefits of sodas.  When I visited El Salvador, I saw in small type on a Coke bottle, written in Spanish, an implication that Coke was a reliable alternative to water in quenching thirst.  Of course, it is not.  Nothing is an alternative to water.

But there is a fascinating history behind colas, if you get into it.  And its curious that a new round of soft drinks are starting to revive claims of health and energy.  The whole energy drink craze, which advertises boosts in mental and physical energy, has created a whole new young population of adherents and, some might say, addicts.  These drinks contain either higher dosages of caffeine, and/or other natural stimulants such as guarana, ginseng, gingko biloba, inositol, taurine, and carnitine.

All of this makes LHM's juxtaposition of his lunchtime sojourn in a graveyard, sipping his Moxie, sort of funny to me.  When I lived in Milwaukee, I was part of a larger social justice community.  Some of the people I hung out with were very anti-Coca Cola, part of an anti-corporate attitude in general.  I sat in a movie once and cringed as one of my friends, upon seeing a Coke ad just before the movie started, yelled "Coke f***s the third world!"  There are many who would see the graveyard as an apt metaphor for what the giant soft drink companies and the giant pharmaceutical companies have done in the course of gathering wealth and growing to their current multi-billion dollar sizes.  Yet I'm reminded by LHM that mors vincit omnia, death conquers all.  Most likely even Coke, Pepsi, and all the others.  After all, Moxie was the biggest cola company in the world, and now you can only find it in New England and Pennsylvania.  The moxie left Moxie, the pep will someday desert Pepsi, and Coke will get coked up and flame out.

Until then, Coke will teach the world to sing, Pepsi will focus on Generation Next, and me and my RC will continue with LHM to the end of his Blue Highways journey, occasionally stopping for a pause that refreshes.

Musical Interlude

A slew of Cola songs!  First, I grew up with this Coke commercial, and I still think of it.

Pepsi hit it big when it landed Michael Jackson to shill its sodas.

Of course, when I got into high school and college, this is how I preferred my Cokes - maybe not with rum necessarily, but something hard.  Here's the Andrews Sisters singing Rum and Coca-Cola.

If you want to know more about Holliston

Holliston Reporter (newspaper)
Town of Holliston
Wicked Local: Holliston (news aggregator)
Wikipedia: Holliston

Next up: Taunton, Massachusetts

Blue Highways: New Bern, North Carolina

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe ride a ferry with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) to New Bern, a place where an invention by a pharmacist has repercussions for all of our health, dental hygiene, and Super Bowl entertainment during time-outs.  Click on the map to orient yourselves, and leave a comment if you'd like - you're always welcome to do so.

Book Quote

"I didn't want to drive the route I'd come the day before, so I headed toward the free ferry across the Pamlico River above where it enters the sound. Two hours later, the ferry, with a loud reversing of props, banged into the slip; three of us drove aboard, and we left in an uproar of engines, water, diesel exhaust, and birds. Laughing gulls materialized from the air to hang above the prop wash and shriek their maniacal laugh (Whitman thought it nearly human) as they dropped like stones from twenty feet into the cold salt scuds; some entered beak first, some with wings akilter, but all followed the first to see an edible morsel, real or imagined.

"New Bern, on the Neuse River, was well-preserved antebellum Georgian houses....as railroads deveoped in North Carolina, New Bern lost its importance as a port city, and "progress"came slower, the old ways remained longer....As a result, New Bern is an architecturally interesting city where the Old South still shows on the streets rather than in a museum."

Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 13

Postcard of New Bern, North Carolina

New Bern, North Carolina

Your fun fact about New Bern for today.  New Bern is the place where Pepsi Cola was created.  Why is this important to me?  First of all, I work on the campus of the University of New Mexico, which evidently has granted some kind of franchise rights to Pepsi.  If you go to a place on campus that sells food, or if you go to any of the campus stores, all you can get is Pepsi.

Second, because of this, I probably drink a Pepsi a day.  Besides black tea sodas are the only way I get any caffeine.  My wife thinks I am a communist or at least un-American because I never developed a taste for coffee.  However, sodas are bad enough.  The last time I had blood work done, my blood sugar was a little high.  I need to cut down on the sugar, but having that can of Pepsi seems to keep me going in the afternoon.

Third, I don't even really like Pepsi all that much.  If I drink a soda, I prefer a regular Coke.  But when Pepsi is all you can get, you take Pepsi.  So I drink Pepsi, and my blood sugar rises.  Thanks, Caleb Bradham.  Pepsi was created by Mr. Bradham in New Bern at his pharmacy and fountain in 1898.  Originally known simply as "Brad's Drink," it was renamed Pepsi Cola possibly because of the pepsin and kola nut in the original recipe.  Either that or it was supposed to give one pep, as Bradham sought to create an invigorating drink that would aid in digestion.  You have to love the first celebrity endorsement by race car pioneer Barney Oldfield, who enthusiastically pitched Pepsi as "a bully drink...refreshing, invigorating, a fine bracer before a race."  Can't you just see someone saying that?  It's a long way from where we've come in advertising, where a "bully drink" ad evolves over time into a 1980s commercial Michael Jackson meeting a pint-sized imitator on an inner-city street (he also filmed another Pepsi commercial in 1984 where his hair caught on fire which injured him badly) and the more current commercial where Coke and Pepsi deliverymen fight in a diner.

Just writing this makes me think that I'm going to quit soda altogether for awhile.

As for LHM's quote above, I really like his description of the ferry ride across the Pamlico River.  I absolutely love river ferries.  I hadn't really thought about them before I lived in New Orleans.  My wife and I would occasionally have the opportunity to ride the ferry across from downtown New Orleans to the Algiers neighborhood across the Mississippi.  On the ferry, one gets a new perspective of the city.  On the ferry, I felt the power of the river as the ferry strained against the current.  The air was always cooler down on the river, and the buildings of downtown took on a new significance as the ferry pulled away from the dock.  Occasionally, a ship or barge passed by - the oceangoing ships rising stories above us as their powerful engines propelled them upstream or gliding silently as they rode the current downstream, or barges low on the water but taking forever to pass by, their pilot boats emitting a steady engine noise as they passed by.  We'd pass by debris floating on the water, brought from who knows where and going to places unknown.  And of course, there were the gulls, their cries still audible above the engine's low rumble. 

Ferry rides always brought me into reflective moments, broken only as the engines revved the ferry into place at the dock, and we walked to our car to wait for the signal to debark.  On misty nights, when the ferry would cross the river to where we waited, you could see nothing except faint lights growing brighter and brighter until, almost like a ghost, the ferry would, almost quietly and daintily, slip into place and lower its gate.  The boathand opening the barrier, his hoodie pulled up over his head, seemed otherworldly, like Charon himself beckoning with a sweep of his hand our souls' passage into another world.

If you want to know more about New Bern

Atlanta Journal-Constitution article on New Bern
City of New Bern
IndieRegister.com (alternative newspaper)
NewBern.com
New Bern Convention and Visitors Bureau
New Bern Sun Journal (newspaper)
Our New Bern (blog)
Tryon Palace Historic Sites and Gardens
Wikipedia: New Bern

Next up: Wallace, North Carolina