He's the real Mackay.

                       Robert Lewis Stevenson, 1883


    We kids watched the clock, waiting for dismissal, while Sister
issued her closing announcements. "Tomorrow, after school, a
man from the Coca-Cola Company will be on the playground. If
you bring a nickel, you can buy a bottle of Coca-Cola. However,
your nickel ... " The bell interrupted and she added, "We'll talk
about it tomorrow."
   
    I'd heard of Coca-Cola, but by the time I got home my
excitement about it had waned. There were five of us kids in
school, and while I was not familiar with multiplication, I felt
certain that five kids times five nickels was more than Poppy
could spare.

    Still, I hoped that one of my siblings would mention the
Coca-Cola man. Sure enough, the next noon at dinner my older
brothers bragged about having collected and sold enough scrap
metal for a bottle apiece. My older sister, Norma, was sick and
not going to school, so that left only me without funds. I said
something to that effect.

    The remark seemed to miss its target. Poppy said nothing.
I helped clear the table, hoping my effort would be noticed and
rewarded. Still nothing from the man with the money.

    I had stalled as long as I could; it was time to return to
school. I shuffled to the door wearing a pitiful look. I paused,
and looked back.

    Ma reached in her purse, and I waited while she fished out
a nickel and knotted it in the corner of a handkerchief. She tied
the other end to my sash and warned, "Leave it there until after
school."

    All afternoon the hanky hung there, as limp as a flag on a
windless day. I was tempted to practice untying the knot, but in
Sister's class it was not a good idea to draw attention to yourself
if what you were doing was nonacademic.

    Before dismissal, Sister tapped a ruler against a poster on
the wall. The ruler always got our attention. Once when a boy
seated behind me pulled my hair, Sister slapped his hands with
the ruler. As she turned her back and returned to the front of
the room, Harold whispered to me, "They're bleeding."

    I had no pity; my head still stung from his tug on my hair.

    Now Sister said, "Those of you who are fortunate enough
to have a nickel should, in good conscience, give it to the
missionaries in the Belgian Congo, for the starving pagan
babies, instead of spending it on foolishness."

    So that's what she'd started to say yesterday. These darkskinned,
wide-eyed children on the poster had sad faces and
swollen stomachs. How could they be hungry with those big
stomachs? And where was the Belgian Congo? And what did
pagan mean? Whenever the pagan babies came up at home,
Poppy said he had enough mouths to feed. But he usually found
a coin or two, even if it was only pennies.

    I hoped that Sister hadn't seen my hanky with the tell-tale
nickel knotted inside. I don't know if any of my classmates
succumbed to her suggestion and dropped their money in the
mission box, but I know that when the bell rang and I slunk out
to the playground, a long line loomed ahead of me.

    At last my turn came. I forked over my money and watched
the man plunge his arm into a keg of ice and come up waving
a dripping bottle. In one fell swoop he wiped it on a towel tied
to his belt, popped off the metal cap, and handed me my first
Coca-Cola.

    Pushing away an image of pagan babies, I tipped the cold
bottle to my mouth and gulped ravenously. I paused to breathe;
my eyes crossed and filled with hot tears. I blinked them open,
took another swig, and another. A million bubbles fizzed, boiled
over, burst in the cauldron of my innards. An unexpected belch
brought a fiery explosion into my chest, throat, nose, eyes.

    Oh, the sting of it! This was like nothing I'd ever tasted.

    I'd heard that if you dropped a nail into a bottle of Coca-Cola
the nail would soon dissolve. I guess that meant the drink was
poison. But they couldn't sell poison. And I'd seen pictures of Santa
Claus drinking Coca-Cola, so, undaunted, I drained my bottle.

    Coca-Cola became my soda of choice.

    Many years passed. The new and improved age of advertising
dawned and, out of the blue, the Coca-Cola company announced
it would retire their ninety-nine-year-old secret formula. They
would replace it with a smoother, sweeter drink: New Coke.

    They had toyed with their customers' loyalty before. Years
earlier, they had started calling the drink simply Coke, and
despite the claim that the recipe hadn't changed, connoisseurs
detected that the taste had undergone subtle changes from
then on. Maybe it was the packaging, the aluminum cans and
plastic containers, but Coke didn't have that old pizzazz. And
Diet Coke, with artificial sweetener, with or without caffeine,
was something else altogether. The same went for Cherry Coke,
which should not come bottled at all; it should be concocted at
a soda fountain from sickeningly sweet syrup.