Coca-Cola Bottles

My father was an Armed Guard gunnery officer in 1942-1944 (that's his picture by my name).

Remember the old coke bottles had the city name of the bottler cast into the bottom.
He told me this anecdote:
When a convoy came into port, in North Africa primarily, all the Armed guard officers got together and each one bought a bottle of Coke. They looked on the bottom of their bottles and the one holding bottles with cities on the bottle bottoms closest to New York to City treated all the others to their soda pop.

Have you heard of this,or something similar, before?

 

Well, having grown up in the late forties, I remember doing the same thing....see who had a Coke from a city the farthest away from Abilene, TX. Unfortunately, our winning city was usually Dallas or Lubbock!

In WWII, it probably was a great way to find all sort of exotic cities on the bottle because of the large logistics in getting material out to the fronts;

BTW, in OCS in WWII, all cokes had "Open Other End" on the bottom.

 

these are they.. Antique Coca-Cola Bottle Hall of Fame

 

Well, gee, Ray I'm NOT THAT old!

The ones I remember are more like this one

 

sorry texson, I know your not antique, he! he! right! so the bottom is the location, the others were from an earlier period then!..ray..

 

wow! this guy thinks he is on an earner? 1945 COCA COLA BOTTLE FOUND UNDER THE SEA - ANTIQUE Philippines - 1148210

 

Yeah "texson", we used to play that game on the bottom of Coke bottles too, on the Hi-Line in Montana were I grew up the most common were from the nearest "big city" that had a bottling plant, Havre MT., but due to distribution needs or some other "internal" Coca-Cola requirements we would occasionally get a bottle from Coeur d’Alene Idaho, or Minot North Dakota, or Great Falls MT., and even Billings MT.

Havre was only sixty miles away, so that was where most of them came from in my little town. But then again, I wondered at times if the bottles with other names on the base weren’t just indications of where they were first filled, and then once they were "in the system" they could end up being filled at other bottling plants depending on which district they were "returned" to. Like you buy a Coke in Denver, and go on a road-trip and don’t turn it in for another Coke until you are in Chicago or something. Then the new product would be in the Chicago distribution center unless something just like that happened in its future.

 

how many different city origins were there on the bottles clint..

 

Lord Ray, I wouldn't have a clue. I suppose they embossed them with different bottling plant names to keep track of how many they sent to each one for the "start up" or something. This is all just supposition on my part, but say the Havre plant opens up in 1945 when the population of that town exceeded a certain number. Like McDonalds used to need over 15,000 people in an area before a new francise could be issued for that spot. Then the home office in GA would have "x" number of bottles with that name put on the bottom of the bottles in a run of glass production.

That way they could keep a sort of "count" on how many of the bottles originally shipped to that plant for its initial run were returned to that plant and such stuff. Just guesses on my part, but since mostly I saw bottles from that plant in my town, I think they just re-cycled inside our small area for the most part. All just guesses of course, I'm not a Coke lore fan really.

 

I'll have to get my sis on this, as she works for coca-cola clint, I'll be to seeing her tomorrow, ray.

 

cheers lou, you popped up as I posted, many thanks, ray..

 

I'll bet that number really went up post war, I toured the one in Havre on a "school trip" one time in grade-school and Havre wasn't all that big a city.

When my family moved to the Central Montana area, there was one in Lewistown too, and they never had over 10,000 population. That plant closed down in the seventies, was purchased by a private individual and now bottles and sells spring water all over the state and some of the intermountain west.

 

LOL! I actually spit out a little coca-cola reading this. I like how the headline says antique but the description says "brand new"

 

cant blame him for trying luke, he's got plenty of bottle! so to speak..