There are lots of root beer pretenders - but there is only one real root beer: Hires!

Hires was the original root beer - and some say the original soft drink. Here is the obligatory wikipedia article on Hires: Hires Root Beer on Wikipedia. Here is another link to information on Hires root beer from the company that sells it: Hires Root Beer.

Hires was created in 1866 right after the Civil War. In 1893 it was first sold in bottles to the public.

These days, it is often hard to find Hires root beer. The company that currently produces Hires also produces A&W root beer - and apparently A&W root beer is cheaper to produce. So quite often, you won't find one where you can find the other.

I guess other root beers may be as good, but none of them can compete with my memories of Hires as a kid. There is nothing like a root beer float made with Hires. I remember the two soft drinks on my Grandfather's back porch were Hires and 7-Up - and 7-Up is what the gave us when we were sick and trying to get liquids down us - so we never wanted to drink that stuff when we were healthy. HA!

Thinking of Hires brought back an old memory - when I was maybe 6 or 7, I collected old bottle caps with a friend. I have no idea what happened to that collection, but I ran into a few bottle cap collections when I was looking for root beer pictures. Here are a couple of the old bottle caps.

Here is an ad for Hires root beer from 1933. It looks like they used some of the same advertising techniques back in 1933, huh?

Oh! And we have to have a picture of a root beer float - so here it is:

Root beer floats on Wikipedia

What was your favorite beverage when you were a kid? (Oh, and cyndelee says to add smiles! )

Two farmers were discussing their problems. Farmer Bill said, "I've got a couple of birds nesting in my horse's mane. I've tried to get rid of them. But they just won't go away."

Farmer Joe thought for a minute and said, "Just sprinkle the horse's mane with yeast."

"Yeast? Why yeast?" farmer Bill asked.

Farmer Joe responded, "Yeast is yeast and nest is nest, and never the mane shall tweet." *

* The Ballad of East and West

Ha! My jokes are so old I have to footnote them!