(Reprint of Georgia Rambler, By Charles Salter)
Is it "the real thing?"
By golly, is this the recipe for "the pause that refreshes?"
While sipping a canned Pepsi-Cola in a Gainesville drugstore, I waited for a fishing friend to guess the answer.
"I believe it is," said pharmacist Everett Beal, as we read ingredients to make what a druggist more than 50 years ago identified as "Coco (sic) Cola Improved."
The formula for a soft drink had been written in brown ink on two pages of an old book of "receipts" owned many years ago by a Georgia pharmacist.
After his death, the book was given to another druggist, whose widow years later gave it to Everett, then operating a drugstore in Griffin.
Just as confident as I am that the sun will rise again in the east tomorrow, I'll bet Everett and I never will know whether the recipe actually was an early Coca-Cola formula.
Only two, perhaps four people on planet Earth, know the complete Coca-Cola recipe, and their identities are a very closely guarded secret, I'm told, "for obvious reasons."
I wonder whether they ever talk in their sleep.
Everett and his wife, Judy, haven't tried yet to mix any "spike" or "dope." Those were nicknames my late grandfather and other oldtimers gave to the new-fangled drink advertised as Coca-Cola decades ago.
Even if this were a 50- or 70-year-old Coke formula, I'll bet ingredients for the "real thing" are slightly different today.
Some of the things listed on pages 188 and 189 in the old book of receipts would be hard to find.
Federal agents might frown if we went shopping for ground coca or fluid extract coca. Cocaine is among several things extracted from leaves of a tropical plant called coca.
We could easily find alcohol, nutmeg, prunes, cinnamon, caramel, sugar, water, citric acid, vanilla extract, lime juice, lemons, oranges and caffeine.
Maybe there's a special this week on cola nuts shipped from Africa.
The Coca-Cola Co. says the "birth of a refreshing idea" occurred in Atlanta in 1886 when pharmacist John S. Pemberton " ... according to legend, first produced the syrup for Coca-Cola in a three-legged pot in his back yard."
His bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, suggested the name.
The Atlanta Journal on May 29, 1886, published a small advertisement hailing Coca-Cola as "delicious, refreshing, exhilarating, invigorating."
Coca-Cola was described as a "new and popular fountain drink, containing the properties of the wonderful coca plant and the famous cola nuts."
On a sunny, cold morning in Atlanta, I took a photograph of the old soft drink formula to the office of Bill Pruett, public relations director of the Coca-Cola Co.
Dashing toward the goal line right away, I asked, "Bill, how many people in the world today know the Coca-Cola formula?"
Pruett, commendably composed, said, "I don't know. ... The precise information about what individuals by name at any given time know the full recipe or formula for Coca-Cola is something that simply isn't discussed here."
I had figured it wasn't bandied about during the morning coffee and Coke breaks.
Pruett said that probably "no more than a couple of people" in the company know the full formula. Two retired people likely had knowledge of it.
I told Pruett about seeing the old book of receipts, placed the photograph on his desk, and asked, "As you people say, is this the real thing?"
He chuckled and said, "Well, you know I'm interested in looking at it ... but, I couldn't conceivably tell you."
Through the years numerous people have claimed to have the original Coke formula, requested a confirmation or denial of authenticity, or offered to sell it to the company.
The Coca-Cola formula is a "proprietary secret" that is "technically" unknown to the federal government, although the company must certify that Coke contains or does not contain certain elements.
Pruett said the company has gone to court a number of times to protect its name and trademark.
"The position we have taken in modern years is that we don't as a company comment on or confirm or deny any information you present to us about the formula for Coca-Cola," he said.
I left the photograph with Pruett and had a hunch that it would either raise some eyebrows or make somebody chuckle up yonder in the executive suites.
And, it isn't likely that I'll ever know if it was the real thing.
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