All you readers from California and the other 48 states, and member-nations of the UN security council are using the wrong expression for a carbonated beverage.

It’s not “pop”. That’s lame.

It’s not “soda” either. Soda is a white powder you use to try to make your refrigerator smell like something besides what you cooked last night. And it’s not working.

It’s a “coke”.

In Texas, all sodas are cokes. This is simple efficiency, how many goddamn words do you need to waste on these things?

Bubba: You want a coke?
Earl: Yep.
Bubba: What kinda coke you want?
Earl: Gimme a Dr Pepper

That is not a typo. Dr Pepper does not have a “.” after the “r”. It never has. In 1885 when a pharmacist named Charles Alderton invented Dr Pepper in Waco Texas, periods were pretty hard to come by, usually once a month on the Santa Fe train.

I might have made some of that up.

Dr Pepper is supposed to be the oldest major soft drink brand in America. The legend goes Alderton named it after the father of a girl he was in love with, but frankly that sounds like bullshit to me and more than a little weird.

There is an independent bottler in Dublin Texas, the oldest Dr Pepper bottler in the country, that still produces DP using pure cane sugar and not corn syrup.

http://www.dublindrpepper.com/

The old Dr Pepper logo had the numbers 10, 2 and 4 in it. You were supposed to drink one 3 times a day because that’s when your body needed over a hundred calories of sugar and crap. But not prune juice. That is just a nasty rumor.

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