While visiting my sister recently, we had occasion to visit a quintessentially-cute small New England town. After browsing the toy store and book store, we entered the wayback machine this really cool shop that was combination antique store and old-fashioned ice cream counter.
Before we even set foot inside, though, I was taken with this gem on the front porch:
It's an old Coke vending machine. Here's another view:
Now, it doesn't look that old, does it? I mean, I remember using machines like this. Don't you? You just deposit your twenty cents in here --
--and go ahead and choose whatever combination of coins works for you. It's flexible.
Then you open the side door and pull your 12-ounce glass bottle of full-on sugary goodness out from right there --
--and then you use the bottle opener to pop off the cap.
Oh, wait a minute.
When was the last time you bought a soda for two dimes, a dime and two nickels, or four nickels? One that came in a glass bottle with a crimped-on bottle cap that could only be removed by an opener? From a machine that didn't dispense "diet" sodas, or 12-ounce cans, or plastic, 16.9-ounce bottles?
Or accept dollar bills for payment?
Yeah. I know.
So I marched inside and said to the nice lady behind the ice cream counter, you know, I remember using Coke machines like that... and it kinda bums me out that you have it out front of your ANTIQUE store! I mean, geez, I know I was born in the 1960s, but... antique??
She looked me straight in the eyes and smiled, and without missing a beat, she replied,
"It's not antique. It's collectible."
Oh.
Collectible, I can live with. But antique? How can anything I remember using or playing with or owning be considered an antique?
Yikes.
And then I ordered a scoop of peppermint ice cream on a sugar cone and ate the whole thing.
The end.
