Pop on the farm

By Phil Cobb | November 7, 2017 |

Andrew McCrea

As a young man on the farm, many afternoons during planting and harvest season, my grandfather would drive his pick-up to the field and hand deliver a soda pop to me. On the last day of harvest in October of 1998, my grandfather made his usual delivery and said, “This will be the last pop I bring to you.” He meant for the season, but it was indeed, the last he would ever deliver to the field. Just a few months later, at the age of 95, he entered a nursing home.

Getting a pop on the farm is a way of life for many. Perhaps that’s why on a recent trip to Oklahoma I took time to take my son to a place called, “Pops.” As the name implies, it’s famous for soda pop.

Marty Doepke oversees the day-to-day operations at the diner and store on historic route 66. Pops is a relative newcomer to the Mother Road, just over a decade into its existence. “We have literally 700 plus kinds of pop in the store at all times,” says Marty. Some of the brands you’ll find here have roots in the early 20^th century. Other pops are new to the scene.

Those new sodas come in a wide variety of flavors. “These days nothing seems to surprise me,” he says. “We have seven different types of bacon-flavored soda!” If there is a trend in soda flavors Marty says, “I’ve seen a lot of food-flavored sodas and they’re really more gimmicky than anything else because I can assure you they don’t taste very good!”

Marty is correct. The “key lime pie pop” I selected would have tasted much better as a slice of actual pie than in a soda bottle. There are many brands of pop from foreign countries as well. “The ones from Mexico tend to be much sweeter than the ones here,” says Marty. And then there’s the Dandelion and Burdock pop from England. “To me it’s completely odd, but for the English travelers who come through here they love the fact we have it. They’re drinking it down, but I just don’t see how they do it!”

“I’ve probably had 1500 different types over the last few years. As it comes in off the trucks we’ll sit back there and drink them in the warehouse and talk about them,” explains Marty. Sometimes it’s fun and sometimes we’re like, ‘Why are we doing this?’”

For my son and me, it was a chance to enjoy meeting Marty, explore the 700 types of pop in the coolers and then snap a photo in front of the sixty-six foot tall pop bottle outside the store. It was a time to share a pop and remember all of those pops my grandfather used to bring me in the field.

Andrew McCrea travels the countryside as host of the radio & TV feature, “American Countryside.” Follow his travels at AmericanCountryside.com and by following the show on Facebook. Reprinted with permission from Farm Journal.