If the world has ended, or if a rogue wave has blown Saipan into Polynesia, I wouldn\u2019t even know about it. I\u2019ve spent the past week unplugged. That\u2019s because I plunged into yet another road trip through the Old West. This time around it\u2019s pleasure, not business. <\/p>\n
Anyway, as is appropriate for the week of July 4, we\u2019ll now veer into some Americana. Kindly leave your zoris by the door, please, and pull on some boots. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll start by offering a term from the dusty porch of a sleepy roadside market. That\u2019s where I am having my morning coffee, such coffee serving as a chaser for a can of soda. Come to think of it, I\u2019ll offer two terms today, not just one. Such is the potency of the soda-and-coffee combination. <\/p>\n
The first term is \u201cfarrier.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a profession. A farrier fits horseshoes and tends other tasks in the equine-footing realm. I know this because, here at the roadside market, I got to talking with a guy who is a full-time farrier. <\/p>\n
He said that business this time of year is always brisk, of course.<\/p>\n
I just nodded knowingly.<\/p>\n
What I didn\u2019t tell him, but I will tell you, is what I actually know about horses. And what I know about horses is absolutely nothing. I have friends who own horses, so over the years I\u2019ve done a lot of knowing nodding of the know-nothing variety. <\/p>\n
Now that we\u2019re all caught up on the horse topic it\u2019s time for a second term from the lexicon of Americana. That term is \u201cRC Cola.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up until today I had no idea that they still made the stuff. RC Cola, which competed cheek by jowl with Coke and Pepsi, was my favorite in the 1970s. <\/p>\n
RC had a robust advertising presence. Singer Nancy Sinatra, daughter of Frank Sinatra, pitched RC in some ads that were of the groovy 1960s variety.<\/p>\n
In the 1970s RC had some country twang in their ads. Many of the ads had a small-town theme. Those ads were a good reflection of 1970s hometown culture, or at least a good reflection of its idealized depiction. Some of the ads are available on YouTube.<\/p>\n
A line from an RC jingle still rings in my ears: \u201cMe and my RC, \u2018cause what\u2019s good enough for other folks ain\u2019t good enough for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a great line that did justice to a great soda, and so much the better that it used one of my favorite words, \u201cain\u2019t,\u201d in the process. <\/p>\n
The jingle came to mind when I noticed RC Cola in the market this morning. Though I recall liking the soda on its own merits back in the day, I suspect it was the old advertising campaign that tipped me into action and converted my mere recognition of the brand into an actual sale.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because recalling those ads also allowed me to relish memories of an idyllic small-town upbringing. <\/p>\n
There is, however, one minor problem in my story: I did not have a small-town upbringing. But, hey, those commercials were still fun to think about.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll also think about the fact that culture, and depictions of culture, have a way of swapping ends faster than a tin roof in a typhoon. It\u2019s easy to lose track of which side is which. <\/p>\n
Let\u2019s talk shop for a moment. I once saw a slice of a marketing campaign that targeted retirees. The company populated its list of leads by asking people to submit brief comments about their best memories. Judging from the comments that I saw, a large number of those memories were memories of various TV shows. Many other memories were centered on celebrities and sports teams. Overall, I\u2019d say that roughly half of those prime memories were rooted in media or entertainment, at least if we take the broadest sense of the terms. These were the markers by which people took measure of the past, including, one can assume, their own pasts. <\/p>\n
The culture was, in other words, interwoven with its own depictions.<\/p>\n
This demographic, the retired set, was well into adulthood before the Web was ubiquitous. It had far less saturation in electronic media than most people have nowadays. I\u2019ll let you connect the dots if you want to ponder this further.<\/p>\n
As for me, I can\u2019t sit on the stoop of this roadside market any longer. I\u2019ve still got 620 miles to drive. The skies are clear. The craggy mountains offer a stark, dry beauty, and my pickup truck kicks up some dust as I pull out of the parking lot. This scene has a true Western texture to it; in fact, it\u2019s almost as real as a commercial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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