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In the early 1930s, Sarasota and the rest of Florida, was still suffering from the stock market crash in October of 1929 and the local real estate boom and bust of 1926. Things were so low that the public school system shut down a month early and instituted a tuition fee to be able to re-open in the Fall of 1933.

What a welcome sight it must have been to see the long-vacant Dixie Hupmobile Automobile Co. building on the corner of 9th Street (now Fruitville Rd.) and Goodrich Avenue morph into the Sarasota Nehi Bottling Co.

During the 1890s, carbonated soft drinks were available only at soda fountains. As bottle blowing became more mechanized, the soft drink makers developed more markets and opened more bottling plants.

About the time I was 11-12 years old my family moved to within a half-block of the Nehi plant. I soon discovered heaven-on-earth. When they would crank up the bottling machine we could hear the clink-clank (no air conditioning and open windows) as the bottles progressed along the conveyor.

That was the signal for me and my buddies (Grady Cain, Elmer Taylor, Billy Blasingame, Peanut Harding and Charlie Parker to name a few) to go sit on the inside window sill and wait for the "cripples" to come along. No matter if it was R.C., Orange, Strawberry, Root Beer, Grape, or Chocolate, the operator would let us have the mis-capped and the mis-fills to drink there. After about an hour or two we would be stuffed. Come supper time-my mother found out-I wasn't hungry. I don't know for sure but I suspected she might have gone to the plant to complain because we soon found a "Employees Only" sign hanging across the doorway.

And then the plant ceased operations in 1978. Oh well, by then I was 50 years old and didn't need all those extra calories. Such is life....