The King of The World

After hiking up to the site where our food processing facilities will be (and getting lost in the scrub and finding the remnants of an cattle abattoir), I went back into town and indulged in one of the great delights of my life: ice-cold Coca-Cola in a glass bottle.

Without tipping my hand too much, I'm old enough to recall the debacle that was New Coke. Remember? All those cans went out on the shelf, all the promotion, all the hype ... and it went over like a proverbial fart in church. Now, to be fair, Coke recaptured some of their lost steam brought back "old Coke" in the form of Coca-Cola Classic. It's been some time since I've had Coke in a can in the states ... I wonder if that's still the label?

Well, neither here nor there. The Coke in Zambia never went through New Coke, old Coke, Coca-Cola Classic. It never has had corn syrup / sugar / high fructose whatever, either ... Zambians eat almost all the corn they grow. Nope, this Coke is cane-sugar, and takes me back in my mind to the lunch counter at (now I'm really dating myself) Woolworth's in the Sault that where Mom used to take my sister and I.

I remember researching for a poorly-written paper during my undergraduate years and coming across a advert from 1945-6 where a circular Coke sign sporting a knowing grin was pouring a bottle of Coke into an equally happy planet Earth. Coke did conquer the world; my metric for how far out a place is depends on their availability of Coca-Cola. For example, Shang'ombo over on the Angola border, has been reported to be missing much in the way of Coke (and other softies). It is therefore, in my book, remote. Difficult for Coke = difficult for everything.

The last note of worth is the glass bottle. Unlike a Fanta or a Sprite, whose bottles have their own distinctive cylindrical shapes, the Coke bottles seem shaped perfectly to roll across your forehead. Which is what I did for a least two minutes after finishing the drink itself.

Indulgences, indeed: sweet Coke and coolness on a heated brow.