Soda Fountain Season

Soda, POP, fizzy juice, LOLLY WATER, sodey dope, BELLY WASH, seltzer, COKE, and tonic. Is your tongue tingling yet? It's soda fountain season in Texas!

Pictured: Colorized photograph of three women sharing a beverage at a soda fountain, ca. 1947.
Credit: Portal to Texas History.

"tssSSS kr-POP!"

As summer in Texas digs its claws in, usually around late July, it's tempting to dismiss what remains of the season as an obligatory trudge towards the school year and the coziness of fall beyond it. But like a flower that blooms in the desert, there are certain things that distinguish themselves under the harshest conditions.

Yes, when the mercury climbs and the cicadas' hypnotic drone is loudest is when the fizziness of a freshly carbonated soda is its most potent or the slurp of a frosty ice cream concoction is as near perfection as a cold beverage ever achieved.

Thirsty?

Nostalgia Dispensaries

Very few can claim immunity to the nostalgic pull of an old-fashioned soda fountain. Even children who don't yet understand the concept of nostalgia can sense that a soda fountain is not so much a real place as much as it is a memory of a real place, like a themed ride at Disney World. The long marble bar, the soda dispensers, and the shelves of retro candy are all props in a scene depicting somewhere and sometime we'd like to be. But that's the magic of the old-fashioned soda fountain: no matter where or when we grew up, somehow, soda fountains are all of our happy place.

Fun with Potions and Tonics

But where did the idea for this magical place come about? The answer is found at your local pharmacy, almost two centuries ago. After all, doesn't a spoonful of sugar make the medicine go down? Nineteenth-century druggists (equivalent to modern-day pharmacists) may well have inspired these famous lyrics: by the 1850s, you'd be hard pressed to find a pharmacy that didn't have a soda fountain. In fact, it was common practice for druggists to develop their own "patent medicines," or secret tonic formulas that combined drugs like cocaine and caffeine with flavored soda water. Source. If the combo was potent enough, it was sure to win repeat customers who found the elixir capable of putting an extra skip in their step...

Pictured: Advertisement for Ayer's Cherry Pectoral, a liquid cough syrup sold in the 1890s that contained three grams of morphine per bottle.
Credit: Public Domain
Pictured: R. P. Harben and Son Drug Store, 1912, Richardson, Texas.
Credit: Portal to Texas History

“System Purifier”

In this 1912 photograph of R. P. Harben and Son Drug Store, a large sign advertises Tanlac Tonic, a popular "system purifier" that contained gentian, buckthorn, rhubarb, licorice, glycerin, wild cherry...and a 15% alcohol content!

In this 1900 satirical cartoon, a saloon keeper watches a druggist dispense his elixirs to a mob of customers. The caption reads, "The kind of drunkard I make is going out of fashion. I can't begin to compete with this fellow."
Credit: Public Domain

From Medicine to Milkshakes

It was only a matter of time before the medicinal properties of these miracle elixirs fell under increased scrutiny, resulting in the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, which banned cocaine and opiates in over-the-counter products.

However, soda fountains found renewed purpose when the closure of bars during Prohibition created a need for public gathering places. To appease their new clientele, druggists found innovative new uses for carbonated water, combining it with flavored milk and a raw egg to create something called a milkshake. The hybrid soda fountain-ice cream parlor concept caught on and soon evolved into what we think of today as the old-fashioned soda fountain.

Soda jerks stand at the soda fountain of McCleskey's Hotel Drug in Mineral Wells, 1940.
Credit: Portal to Texas History

Author

Mallory Laurel

Special Projects Coordinator