THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 24, 1994 TAG: 9410240029
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
No sooner did I remark the other day on the growing scarcity of chocolate-flavored soda pop but what a reader brings up the topic of the vanished Grapette, the grape-flavored beverage that had five ounces or less in a tiny bottle.
Is nothing stable anymore?
Perhaps because it shrank when other bottled beverages - Coca Cola, Royal Crown, and Pepsi were expanding - the Grapette seemed to be of a special, precious quality in its small package.
``It was very sweet,'' Everett Doggett Jr. of Surry County recalled the other day.
The Grapette quenched one's thirst right off, and, unlike the soft drinks in the much larger bottles, it didn't leave a whole lot more liquid for the consumer to get through.
And somehow it seemed tastier, much more subtle than the various colas.
Grapette stayed petite even when the capacities of other pop bottles began to enlarge.
Pepsi Cola was the first to go to 12 ounces - or, as its advertising jingle put it, ``twice as much for a nickel, too.''
Soft drink containers have gone ballistic now, breaking all bounds.
You can buy 'em by the gallon or more. One, called the ``Big Gulp,'' you have to approach with care, lest you fall in.
Everett Doggett recalled that the young women of that era preferred the dainty Grapette to any other soft drink.
When Everett and his two buddies set out to triple-date with their girlfriends, the boys, before they met their dates, would pool all their pocket change to collect a dollar amongst them.
In those days of the Great Depression, when nearly everybody was somewhat short of cash, gasoline sold for as little as 18 cents a gallon.
A dollar would purchase three gallons of gas and six Grapettes, each costing a nickel.
That left 16 cents with which to splurge on gum or candy.
An entire evening's entertainment cost a dollar, back there in the 1930s.
One of the three musketeers would be entrusted with all the change.
When time came to pay for the treat, all three boys would offer, strenuously, to be the host, crying, all together, ``Let me pay this time!'' and ``The heck you say, it's my turn!'' and ``Gimme that check!''
And all the time, just one of them had the dough.
For their dates, it was quite a show.
Finally, the one with all the loot would be allowed to prevail.
And next time, another of the trio would have the chance to come up with the collective cash.
And now, on their next anniversary, Everett wishes he could find a Grapette to present to the former Anna Delilah Jones.
``She's the backbone of everything I do,'' he said. by CNB