Farewell to the Coke bottle

Posted at 1:40 PM on August 30, 2012 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Icons

Coca-Cola Bottling Co. - Winona Historic Commerce Tour from Minnesota Historical Society on Vimeo.

When you grow up in a declining New England milltown in the '60s, you had to get your view of exotic lands from the bottom of a Coke bottle.

In those days, Coke plants cranked out Coke only in bottles; there were no cans, and at the bottom of each bottle was stamped the names of far-off locales where the bottles were made and the Coke was poured -- places like Detroit or Cleveland.

Or maybe Winona.

Those days ended a long time ago for all but one sort of bottle, the ones from Winona.

That ended today when the bottler there -- the last bottler to provide 6 oz. returnableCoke bottles -- announced they're quitting the operation.

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Comments (1)

You can still buy Mexican Coke (no drug jokes, please) in a real glass bottle, made with real cane sugar.

But RIP, Winona bottle factory. Another piece of my childhood gone.

Posted by Bob Moffitt | August 30, 2012 4:16 PM

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