How fast can you drink that?

On our annual non-stop summer vacation trips from Los Angeles to Oklahoma we drove across the southern desert of California, southern Arizona, deserts and mountains of New Mexico, west Texas, and south central Oklahoma. On this overnight 24-hour endurance run we would briefly stop at some Texaco stations for potty and a Coke. Back then, in the early 1950s, an eight ounce glass bottle of Coke from a big red Coke machine was Five-cents. If you kept the bottle it was an additional two-cent deposit. More money than I wanted to spend. So I quickly guzzled down the Coke and placed the empty bottle back in the empties rack because my dad did not want to spend much time at the gas station. So our stops were about five-minutes long. Faster than the pit stops at the Indy-500. Only enough time to visit the boy’s room and wolf down a bottle of Coke. If you had ever drunk a coke in thirty-seconds a sudden reaction will almost always occur. Especially if you are eight-years old. It’s amazing how loud a bubbling belch could come from a small grade school boy. Not to mention the soda fizz that erupts out the boy’s nostrils. Creating a burning and tear producing re-action. Boy howdy it hurt. “Get in the car son!” So after a brief head-count we are off like Andy Granatelli.