Ammonia Coke

There was a movie on this morning with that Katherine Heigl, about whom I know nothing except that everybody hates her. Why? I don't know! It's none of my beeswax! But maybe some of that popular hate rubbed off on me because I was ready to change the channel immediately... BUT! Suddenly I saw a street corner from our old neighborhood in Atlanta! I saw the old drugstore where I used to go when I first moved there. I was hit by a wave of nostalgia with which I now hope to bore you. You could sit with a sixty cent cup of coffee all day. The old woman behind the lunch counter cooked delicious soup at home every night and brought it in every morning. With maudlin veracity I recall her Brunswick stew. Strange things on the menu (fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches - Elvis's favorite), and once I saw a man order an "ammonia Coke." I DO NOT ENDORSE THE DRINKING OF AMMONIA COKES! IT MIGHT KILL YOU! I am just telling you what I saw. After strenuous debate (it was on the menu but no one had ever requested this old drugstore fare in memory; as I recall, the waitress was about to go away to art school at Parsons and probably didn't want to kill anybody and ruin her future) they used no more than a few drops of ammonia, and I am almost certain it is not the same deadly poisonous ammonia of which you are thinking. IN ANY CASE, DON'T DO IT! That place was later transformed into a fancy joint (to my dismay - no more sixty cent bottomless coffee) where (as recorded here) I once had to eat while some people were wildly making out on the same bench where I was sitting. The old woman who made the soup would have fainted. But I guess that is how the fancy people do it in our strange new modern world where old ladies and drugstores are no longer welcome! In the movie, it is still a fancy joint and apparently Katherine Heigl owns it. But I had to go to class, which was the best thing for all of us, so I don't really know. (When I went there, the drugstore was called Fleeman's. This photo is from even earlier. Who cares?)