Home : Miscellaneous : Did You Bring Bottles?

Did You Bring Bottles?

It's such a strong memory for me that I named the whole site after it.

Unlike most Southern households, my family was more of a soda pop family than an iced tea family. My Dad hated (and still hates) tea, so I grew up drinking RC Cola, Cheerwine, Sundrop, and Nu-Grape, always in glass bottles. I came along after the classic era of tiny Coke bottles; we always bought 8-packs of the 16-ounce size. Sometimes you came up with really old bottles which still displayed long-abandoned logos.

But the idea was the same. Soft drinks came in returnable, reusable glass bottles. When you finished one off, you put the bottle back in its holder on the porch. And on grocery day, you took all your empties to the store for credit on full bottles. It wasn't something you did to save money or come up with extra income. It was just what you did. It was the norm. It was expected.

And always the cashier would ask as you bought soft drinks: "Did you bring bottles?"

It was the honor system at its best. You dumped your bottles in a big rack at the front of the store, and the cashier trusted you. And this, mind you, in a city of 150,000 people. We're not talking about Armpit, Alabama. It was like this at every store: the A&P, Kroger, Big Star, Big Bear, Bi-Rite, and Winn-Dixie.

Eventually, they abandoned the honor system and gave you a receipt when you checked in your bottles. When the new Kroger on High Point Road opened right near my house (our first Kroger "Superstore", which was recently abandoned as too small by another chain), you had to take your bottles all the way to the back of the store. My parents viewed this whole system as a supreme inconvenience.

Eventually, glass returnable bottles became harder and harder to find. My parents hated the first non-returnables (which were also glass and contained one quart). They thought they were too expensive. Soon, however, they gave up and occasionally began buying the new two-litre plastic bottles (which everyone pronounced "two lighter").

Even so, for years after (and maybe even today for all I know), you could still buy Cokes in glass returnable bottles at grocery stores in the small town of Reidsville, twenty miles north of Greensboro. My Aunt Mabel used to hoard them in bulk so all the family could have a stash.

Of course, the idea of reusing soft drink bottles (or potato chip packages or milk bottles) was the product of a less environmentally-conscious era. After all, it's far more efficient to recycle things than to actually reuse them, right?