I tend to use my beverage cups, as vases and candle holders, but these went to a collector:
photo via JunkDrawerLoveEtsy, available here
I found this little story in Note to Buyer:
It is simply part of a gift for someone's dad, who is into Coca Cola items.
photo via JunkDrawerLoveEtsy, available here
My Grandparents were farmers and had a produce stand on a busy highway close to the beach. They sold bottled sodas, mainly Cokes and 7-up or perhaps back then it was Bubble Up? As kids, we were only allowed soda as a treat for special occasions, like birthday celebrations and holidays. Back then no one I knew went to fast food places, like McDees or Kentucky Fried Chicken on a regular basis, so that was considered a treat too!
I remember my Aunt bribing me with my spelling practice using a game like hang man to spell something I could find at McDees related to french fries. If I could spell it we'd all go, but I couldn't spell "potato" in first grade, so me and all my younger cousins were bummed out when I lost. It didn't matter, we all got ice cold cokes from the walk in frig from the produce stand instead!
They had cases and cases of sodas stacked in their garage in wooden crates and on occasion my brother and I would sneak them. I've written about this before, some where on here, but I'll continue...for some reason my brother and I couldn't find a bottle opener, so we'd hammer a nail into the cap and drink it from the small hole. We thought it tasted the best that way after awhile and it became our little bonding ritual.
These were times before pull tab canned sodas were popular or twist off bottle caps were invented. Remember the pull tabs that came all the way off and could be worn like a ring?
photo via wikipedia
My brother and I were never caught, so either they let us have our little bonding secret or we were good! Weirdly enough, I can't remember much of my childhood, but I do remember that memory.
Although do remember, years later when the Produce stand was abandoned and once a year, our four older cousins from up North would visit and take us through a tour in the walk in freezer and the old farmhouse and play ghost walking. At dusk, my brother and I would take turns riding on their shoulders while they went through both abandoned buildings making scary noises, jabbing us, jumping and kicking around stuff, saying, "I just kicked the biggest rodent ever! Should we let them down into this zoo?", while we held on to their foreheads with all our might.
We just loved it and used to make them take us on the ghost walks as much as possible. It never got old, even in the day in the walk in freezer, they'd hide the famous dried out old flattened possum carcass somewhere and pretend to slip on it or kick off some newspaper to scare us with it!
And of course, their visits were special, so we had rounds of cokes with them around the kitchen table!
The good old days!
photo via JunkDrawerLoveEtsy, available here
So perhaps those are the memories I associate with Coca Cola and why I used to collect some of it, like an old time Coca Cola straw dispenser. There are plenty replicas now, but mine had the black knobbed top and I kept coveted individually wrapped paper straws in them, when paper straws were hard to find too. I eventually gave it as a gift to my realtors who collected Coca Cola memorabilia, who helped me hoard houses! but that's another story!
photo via JunkDrawerLoveEtsy, available here
Saying Goodbye: Hopefully now that I know why I collect Coca Cola stuff, I won't need to buy so much of it anymore, but still wonder why I collect drinking cups. Another mystery to solve another day.
Many of my beverage cups have found new homes and I did or do have quite the vintage collection of them! I love the thin etched kind, like the grape etched ones listed here, on VintageToGoEasy or my 90s Ikea crackle glass wide mouthed tumblers, here.
As I said in the beginning of the post, I mainly end up using my drinking cups as votive tea light holders and vases, like the Ikea glasses here:
photo via VintageToGoEasy, distressed 90s Ikea crackle glass set, available here
What I Learned:
1. I do seem partial to green glass, any kind of green glass and I think that might have to do with finding green beach glass since childhood, which seems to be a rarity. So maybe that's another reason I tend to gravitate to Cokes from Mexico and their green glass bottles without twist off caps.
Do you remember tissue papering over bottles like these for Mother's day? and making tissue flowers to place inside them with matching Mother's day cards?
1. I do seem partial to green glass, any kind of green glass and I think that might have to do with finding green beach glass since childhood, which seems to be a rarity. So maybe that's another reason I tend to gravitate to Cokes from Mexico and their green glass bottles without twist off caps.
Do you remember tissue papering over bottles like these for Mother's day? and making tissue flowers to place inside them with matching Mother's day cards?
2. Lately I've been using recycled jars and such as drinking glasses, which seems to be working out just fine, but I still have my favorites, like a few of my Pepsi Cartoon, Arachan and Ribbon Orange drinking glasses that I still use daily. It does feel good to use a recycled jar as a glass knowing reminder that I've left a smaller consumer and environmental print of the earth for a bit.
Now what shall I do with my collection of Coca Cola soda can beverage cups? I either use these as votive candle holders, but with sand at the bottom or on special occasions when I do have a Coca Cola from Mexico because they don't use high fructose corn syrup on their recipe.
Ice cubes sound particularly nice clinking around in these thin cups filled with Coke!
These soda can glass cups are available, contact me at hoarderrehab@gmail.com
Thank you Etsy buyer from JunkDrawerLoveEtsy for sending your little note that helped me in such a big way to solve another mystery to my hoarding ways!
Thank you Etsy for finding new lives and homes for over 570 hoarded items and counting! and bringing me closer to my dream of a Minimalist Organic home with a music art room, instead of hoard storage!
Thank you US, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, Vietnam, Italy, Hong Kong, China and other countries that have dropped by and supported my HoarderRehab and The Destiny of Things adventures!
Click on the shop names to visit my hoard listed daily: HoarderRehab, The Destiny of Things, VintageToGoEasy and now JunkDrawerLove! There are about 103 items listed on JunkDrawerLove and relistings to each shops daily and adding new listings weekly to all shops too! Thanks for looking!
Maybe you'll find something to and give it a new life and share your story with me!
Click on the shop names to visit my hoard listed daily: HoarderRehab, The Destiny of Things, VintageToGoEasy and now JunkDrawerLove! There are about 103 items listed on JunkDrawerLove and relistings to each shops daily and adding new listings weekly to all shops too! Thanks for looking!
Maybe you'll find something to and give it a new life and share your story with me!
Related Stories: some from my drinking glass cup collection
1. The most unique glasses I've ever owned with a story! Green Art Jane Product Glasses from Spain: The Destiny of Things, Story #146
2. Not exactly your usual drinking glasses, but not your usual shot glass collection either, but actually "Say When" Mad Men type jiggers, four different stories, Story 106 here and Story 153 here
3. A coincidental serendipitous story of a mother finding the exact same glass after her step daughter broke her father's favorite "Oink" glass and I had it! Read it here
4. Tea for Two, someone moving to Los Angeles with the home decor theme, "Clarity" in mind and finding my tea cup and snack dish set perfect for their new home! Read it here!
Thanks for stopping bye!
"After all this time, the sun never says to the earth, 'you owe me." Look, what happens with a love like that, it lights up the whole sky." ---Hafez
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