Returning from a week’s vacation, I opened my office door to find a red gift bag in my chair. “Now this is the way to start a Monday and a first day back from vacation,” I thought to myself. The card on the outside said “Hand Delivery to Sandy Sanders.” “Now this must be from someone special,” again I wondered to myself. Inside I found a note: "Dear Sandy, Your column recalling the days of the small bottles of Coke evoked memories almost lost. Another special treat was dropping salted peanuts in a cold Nehi — always strawberry! Today's children are so under privileged." Signed — Lena (Bosch) In the bag were four reproduction bottles of the original Coke and packs of cheese crackers like I also wrote about in my column. Thank you Lena! I ate two of the packs of crackers this week but I am keeping the Cokes on a shelf in my office. I don't think we can find a strawberry Nehi but we can surely share a Coke and peanuts sometime. Stop by anytime ... you are always welcome.

Lena’s note evoked memories for me too. When I was in high school I worked for my aunt at The Lanier County News. My main afternoon job once a month was to collect money owed to the newspaper for advertising. How times have changed. I would take “bills” to the customers. They would look at the handwritten bill, get out their checkbook or go to the cash register and pay me the full amount they owed. You would only upset them if you were to mail them the statement. That was considered “dunning” and you would never do such a thing to a respected customer. Today, the exact opposite reaction would occur.

In the afternoons at the paper another welcomed routine was to take the Coke return bottles and walk down the street to Purvis’ Grocery on the corner of Main Street and the Valdosta Highway. I would show Mr. Purvis the empty bottles; put them in the bottle rack and begin my selection of drinks requested by my aunt and others at the paper. As a teen, I was particularly fond of an Orange Crush in a brown bottle. I would put my salted peanuts in it. A cherished possession of mine at home is an empty Orange Crush from the Orange Crush Bottling Company in Valdosta. My next favorite drink was the Nehi grape and then Coke. Later years the Coke took over as a favorite, but never one larger than six-ounces and only in a green bottle that needed a bottle opener — no twist cap for me. When I moved to Coke I also moved the peanuts there as well.

Mr. Purvis also had a refrigerator where he kept candy bars. I always reached for a Zero. My aunt liked Snickers. In later years as Coke started messing with a good thing and went to the Classic and larger bottles and then to cans, I left my old favorite behind. My “sweet” sin became a “real” Honey Bun with a pint of ice cold milk ... oh, I long for the day I could eat one and not feel the guilt I do today or the extra weight I immediately feel falling to my mid-section. Now when I am at the grocery store buying cookies or the like, I read the nutritional breakout on the side as if somehow it is going to read “0” calories, carbs, fat and sugar. Why can’t grocery stores put cookies and other sweets in brown bags so no one knows what you are buying at the checkout? When you lay a big box of some type of sweet on the checkout conveyor you can feel the customer behind you thinking, “he sure needs that ... he probably eats Honey Buns and Twinkies, too.” I want to scream, “maybe a Honey Bun but NEVER a Twinkie! That’s disgusting.”