Before there was a coffee shop on every corner, there was the soda fountain — that gleaming altar of chrome and marble at the back of the drugstore, with a row of spinning stools that no kid in America could resist. It was where you went after school, after the movies, after church, or for no reason at all. Especially for no reason at all.
Why the drugstore, of all places?
It’s hard to believe today, but you could get all of your prescriptions, your comic books and your ice cream sodas from the same counter. The soda fountain was born in the pharmacy. Druggists in the 1800s were dispensing carbonated water as a health tonic. They found that flavoring it made the “medicine” go down easier — and that they’d created something customers would line up for. Coca-Cola was first served at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia in 1886 for five cents a glass.
By the 1940s and ’50s, the fountain was the beating heart of Main Street — the one spot in town everybody got pulled toward sooner or later. Whether you called it People’s Drug, Rexall, Walgreens or just your local pharmacist, inside they all looked much the same: marble counter, chrome spigots, penny candy by the register, and a young man in a paper hat running the entire operation.
The soda jerk: part chemist, part showman
He was usually a teenager working his first job, and if he was good, he was the closest thing your town had to a celebrity chef. The name came from the way he snapped those fountain handles back. Most of the very best soda jerks were able to perform their job with flair: they could scoop ice cream with one hand while pulling seltzer with the other, then slide the completed drink along a long piece of marble until it stopped right in front of you.
The fountain even had its own secret language, called out from counter to soda man:
Soda jerk slang decoder
- “Burn one!” — a chocolate malted
- “Black cow!” — a root beer float (in some towns, chocolate soda with chocolate ice cream — the debate rages)
- “Draw one!” — a cup of coffee
- “Squeeze one!” — fresh orange juice
- “Adam’s ale” — a plain glass of water (on the house, always)
- “Eighty-six it!” — we’re all out — a phrase that escaped the fountain and lives on in every restaurant kitchen in America
What we ordered
Everyone had a usual, and the man behind the counter knew it before you sat down:
- Cherry Coke — the real kind, syrup pumped right into the glass, no can involved
- The malted — thick enough to bend the straw, served with the frosty metal mixing cup on the side, which meant a bonus half-serving. That metal cup was the fountain’s greatest act of generosity
- Egg cream — no egg, no cream, just milk, seltzer and Fox’s U-bet chocolate syrup. And don’t let a Brooklyn native hear you question it
- Cherry phosphate — that sour fizz you can still taste if you close your eyes
- Banana split — the special-occasion order, when your allowance or your report card justified it
Price check: the fountain menu, about 1955
A nickel bought a fountain Coke. A dime, an ice cream soda. Fifteen cents, a malted — twenty if you wanted two scoops. A banana split was a quarter, and a full lunch — grilled cheese, fries and a cherry Coke — came in under fifty cents. A kid with a dollar was a king.
More than a drink
You paid for a soda and sat at the center of the world, and news traveled along that counter so fast the local newspaper couldn’t keep up. It was the place your mom sent you “to see who was around.” Half the marriages in town began with two straws in one malted — a move that took more courage than anything we’ve attempted since.
The fountain was where you learned to be a person in public: how to wait your turn, how to leave a tip, how to talk to adults who weren’t your parents. Nobody called it social skills. It was just Tuesday.
Where did they all go?
There’s a silver lining to this story: although many of these old fountains have disappeared, (and that disappearance was well underway by the 1970s as marble counters were ripped from their bases or covered with boards) there are still many more around the U.S., even today, scattered through small towns across the country. Chugwater, Wyoming — population 200 — still has one, and plenty of others are serving from the very same stools, in drugstores that haven’t changed much since those days.
If you find one, stop. Order the malted. Ask for the metal cup. Some things still taste exactly the same.
Two straws, one malted, and the whole afternoon ahead of you. That was the good life, and it cost fifteen cents.
Over to you: What was your fountain order — and what did it cost? Was your soda fountain in a drugstore, a five-and-dime, or a diner? Tell us in the comments. First malted’s on the house.
A soda jerk in action. Photo: Alan Fisher, New York World-Telegram & Sun — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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