Soda Fountain Research Articles

Microbial contamination analysis of drinking water from bulk dispensers and fast-food restaurants in the Eastern Coachella Valley, California

Abstract Safe drinking water is a fundamental requirement for human life. The deterioration of water quality primarily involves microbiological hazards, since most evident water-related health problems are the result of microbial contamination. The aim of this study was to evaluate the microbial contamination of drinking water from three sources: water vending machines (WVMs), soda fountains (SFs), and tap water (TW) in the Eastern Coachella Valley (ECV) using physico-chemical parameters, conventional cultivable methods, including IDEXX technology and molecular methods. A total of 72 samples were analyzed and results indicated heterotrophic plate counts (HPCs) bacteria in 20% of samples from WVMs, 25% of samples from SFs, 33.3% of TW samples, and 76% of swab samples. Results also demonstrated 20% of WVM, 88% of swab samples, 41% of SF, and 50% of TW samples had total coliforms. Our qPCR indicated the presence of genetic materials of all six selected microorganisms (Salmonella spp, Listeria monocytogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Campylobacter jejuni, Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis) used as indicators of pathogenic microorganisms in water from WVMs, SFs, and TW, and were represented at different concentrations and predominance.

COMPARISON OF MICROBIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS METHODS IN THE SOFT DRINK INDUSTRY

Water is essential for living beings. It is also one of the main means of transporting contaminants such as pathogenic bacteria. Therefore, water quality must meet basic requirements so that it can be consumed by the population and for use in industries. The objective of this work was to carry out a comparison of two analysis methods (Petrifilm® and Chromogenic Substrate) of water in the beverage industry, contributing to the validation study of the Petrifilm® method for analysis of process water for coliform microorganisms. Currently, only the Chromogenic Substrate method is validated by the Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater. The study was carried out in a soda fountain in the city of Jundiaí-SP. Tests were performed over a period of 6 months, weekly (for process water) and monthly (for line swab). Specific points were chosen for sample collection according to the internal procedure. The obtained results demonstrated that the Petrifilm® method was not efficient to demonstrate the presence of coliforms and comparison with the chromogenic substrate.

Our Town, Shakespeare 70, Ewing, New Jersey

<i>Our Town</i>, Shakespeare 70, Ewing, New Jersey

Ladies Who Lunched and the Battles They Caused

Ladies Who Lunched and the Battles They Caused Emily E. LB. Twarog (bio) Emily Remus, A Shoppers’ Paradise: How the Ladies of Chicago Claimed Power and Pleasure in the New Downtown. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019. 304 pp. Photos, maps, notes, and index. $39.95. Much has been written about the rise of Chicago from the flames of the Great Fire. Scholars of the natural and built environment, labor, and capitalism have demonstrated that Chicago represented the new American industrial landscape. A space defined by architectural wonder and endless bounty, where a working man could achieve wealth and fame and escape his lack of pedigree and connections to the old-money families that defined the social and cultural order of the Eastern seaboard. Emily Remus’s A Shoppers’ Paradise offers up another layer to the history of Chicago: wealthy, well-heeled, white women, or “Chicago ladies” as Remus refers to them, “…devoted themselves to bringing order, culture, and beauty to the urban environment – the civilizing a capitalist society” (p. 12). This is a story of how one very specific group of women occupied downtown Chicago and transformed the space from a city “made of man” dedicated to “industrial production …devoted chiefly to finance, manufacturing, processing, warehousing, and wholesale trade… filled with the institutions and infrastructure that fueled industry” (p. 33). The Chicago Loop was a relatively small area, framed by Lake Michigan to the east, the city’s Levee vice district to the south, mansions to the north, and industrial sprawl to the west. It was made famous by Theodore Dreiser’s fictional account of a young woman who moves from rural Wisconsin to Chicago to find the American Dream in Sister Carrie (1900). Remus uncovers a new perspective on the evolution of Chicago in which the Chicago ladies push the boundaries that defined public and private and, more specifically, “…advance[ed] into public life as both civic actors and consumers…” and how they challenged a patriarchal social and cultural order (p. 7). A Shoppers’ Paradise is a critical contribution to the literature on the culture of capitalism. It brings a much-needed perspective on “the crucial role of gender” (p. 8). Historian Joyce Appleby commented that the “there can be no [End Page 70] capitalism…without a culture of capitalism, and there is no culture of capitalism until the principal forms of traditional society have been challenged and overcome” (p. 8). Remus responds, “Only by taking women and gender into account can historians of capitalism fully understand the evolution of our modern consumer economy and the institutions and environment that support it” (p. 8). A Shoppers’ Paradise is a fascinating examination of that evolution of the culture of capitalism, and Remus excels at exploring the how and why of the challenges. Remus’s fluid and seemingly effortless writing transports the reader to turn-of-the-twentieth century Chicago as the city flourished after the worldwide success of hosting the World’s Fair. The Loop was a defined area with the elevated train system circling the district and a series of streetcars carrying workers, businessmen, and shoppers back and forth from home to downtown. As retailers such as Marshall Field & Co., Carson Pirie Scott & Co., Mandel Brothers, Charles Gossage & Co., and Schlesinger & Mayer established palaces of commerce, the allure of these high-end retailers garnered attention among the city’s wealthiest families as well as working-class people who came to window-shop or work. In addition to the larger stores, the streets were peppered with smaller specialty shops, tearooms, soda fountains, theaters, and hotels. Eventually, the city’s leading women opened offices downtown for their charitable work, creating even more reason for the Chicago ladies to spend a full day out of the house in the Loop. “The new practices of shopping ladies illuminate how gender ideals constrained and shaped an emergent culture of consumption” (p. 9). Each chapter explores one way in which the rise of a consumer culture and the subsequent feminization of public space clashed with the decidedly patriarchal culture of Chicago’s Loop district. Remus effectively uses diaries, newspaper coverage, travel writing, and public records to illustrate how disruptive this transformation was for businessmen. As...

Just Nina Mae: The Struggle of an Early African American Movie Star

Just Nina MaeThe Struggle of an Early African American Movie Star Kristine Somerville Click for larger view View full resolution Nina Mae McKinney, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum [End Page 67] During Hollywood's early years, tantalizing stories of discovery flourished, luring young hopefuls to the fledgling industry out west. According to movie lore, The Hollywood Reporter founder Billy Wilkerson came across sixteen-year-old Lana Turner drinking a Coke at a soda fountain. Photographer David Conover spotted Marilyn Monroe while she was working on an airplane assembly line. And John Wayne was a prop man on John Ford's movie set when the director made him an extra in his film. Fame and fortune for these actors soon followed. Nina Mae McKinney's story of discovery was no less fantastic. She left high school at sixteen to join the chorus of impresario Lew Leslie's all-Black Broadway musical revue, Blackbirds of 1928. Hollywood directors and producers regularly raided Broadway productions for fresh, inexpensive talent to fill their stables at their California studios. After failing to sign jazz singer Ethel Waters, one of MGM's top directors, King Vidor, was on the lookout for an extraordinary Black actress to play the title role of Chick, a singer and dancer in Hallelujah. The movie was a serious look into the lives of African Americans in the South. When he saw Blackbirds, McKinney stood out. He later recalled, "She was third from the right in the chorus. She was beautiful and talented and glowing with personality." When they met after the show, he offered her the lead, skipping the usual preliminary screen tests, acting classes, and makeovers. There is no evidence that McKinney was seeking a movie career; she had fallen in love with theater as a young girl growing up in South Carolina and trained herself as a singer and dancer, borrowing songs and choreography from the movies she saw at the local theater. In many ways, films were still inferior to Broadway, which in 1925 staged over two hundred productions; nevertheless, she accepted Vidor's offer. McKinney portrays Chick, a seductive cabaret dancer who lures a cotton picker into a crooked game of dice. As an actor, McKinney had nuance and depth, and the camera loved her. Dressed in a fringed drop-waist dress, bangles on her arms, gold chains around her neck, she wisecracks, dances, and sings. Vidor praised McKinney's performance and her ability to take direction: "She just had it. Whatever you wanted, whatever you visualized, she could do it. Nina was full of life, full of expression, and just a joy to work with." Critics were also smitten. The Daily News of New York wrote that she was "an honest-to-goodness film star." In the 1930s, Black performers were promoted by identifying them with white movie stars. The press labeled McKinney the "Black Greta Garbo," even though the only things she had in common with [End Page 68] Click for larger view View full resolution Nina Mae McKinney, Safe in Hell, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum [End Page 69] Click for larger view View full resolution Nina Mae McKinney, Safe in Hell, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum the Swedish actress were youth, talent, and beauty. She evoked the era's "It" girl and was anointed the "dusky Clara Bow." Her offbeat, wacky sense of humor drew comparisons to Carole Lombard. African American newspapers simply referred to her as Nina Mae. MGM gave McKinney a five-year contract and rolled out the red carpet, lavishing limousines, hotel suites, and a smartly decorated dressing [End Page 70] Click for larger view View full resolution Nina Mae McKinney, Safe in Hell, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum room on her. Yet her meteoric rise from chorus girl to star quickly stalled. After her successful film appearance in Hallelujah, starring roles did not follow. In 1930, during a fallow period, McKinney followed in the footsteps of minority performers such as Josephine Baker, Anna May Wong, and Paul Robeson and sailed to Europe for a three-month tour. The press covered the eighteen-year-old's departure and noted her fashionable appearance in black satin and a black velvet...

Knock

Knock Kathryn Kulpa (bio) Knock I think of him in black and white. In a postwar world still clearing away its rubble, not quite ready to step into glorious Technicolor. I think of him knockingly, if knockingly is the word I want. If it's a word at all. He is the one who knocks. There's a black leather briefcase in the back seat of his car. There's a white possum foot hanging from the rearview mirror. For luck? It wasn't lucky for that possum. His sharp, questing chin. His foot in your door. All he needs is a moment of your time. All he needs is a chance. Jerk Here's one thing I know: when you were sixteen, you worked at a drugstore soda fountain. Back when drugstores had soda fountains. Pop Tate. And Archie, Betty, and Veronica sipping ice cream sodas through candy-striped paper straws. You were a soda jerk. Isn't that what they called them then? Was there a female version? A jerkette? Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. You learned to read the flavors in customers' eyes, knew which antsy, love-starved teenagers would choose chocolate, which resigned, tired-eyed mothers would settle for vanilla, which cheek-pinching old men would ask for strawberry, extra syrup, Make it sweet like you! And then he threw you by asking for pistachio. There wasn't even a syrup for it, but you made it for him just the same, watched the chartreuse ice cream curling up against the frosty metal scoop. I once had shoes that color, you said. I have—right this very now—a car that color, he said. [End Page 261] You imagined that car, parked outside, startling the sensible black Fords and tan Studebakers of Tiogue Avenue with its pale-green glamour, like a visiting luna moth. But he didn't offer, yet, to take you for a ride. He knew the power of the pause. Hat Trick It was a time when men wore hats. He wore one too. Pick the hat out of a hat. Stetson, homburg, panama, porkpie. A sharp hat for a sharp dresser. A flat sateen ribbon around the brim; a small, bent feather. On the inside of the sweat-stained lining, a two-inch business card tucked into a slit. LIKE HELL IT'S YOURS! PUT IT BACK! THIS HAT BELONGS TO______. He'd never filled it in. Not a man who feared hat thieves. Or maybe he'd stolen it himself, from some other man feckless enough to leave his hat unlabeled. Maybe he'd stolen more than a hat. But you wouldn't have known that then. Buckle At the wedding you didn't wear white because it was a second wedding—not yours, but his. At the county courthouse in Laconia, New Hampshire. You wore a chartreuse shantung suit and shoes dyed to match, silk chartreuse shoes with patent leather buckles. You would have forgiven him a lot when he bought you those shoes. They were going places, those shoes. They were the kind of shoes that could only walk in one direction, up. One, two, buckle my shoe. You used to jump rope to that rhyme. Not so long before. Age of bride: seventeen. His shoes didn't have buckles, but his belt did. The belt was snakeskin leather and the buckle solid brass, rounded just enough that when it left a mark on your skin it looked almost like a smile. Manicure You didn't ask about the sales trips to Canada or the business calls made out of a series of phone booths or the identical black briefcases stacked in the linen closet. Those weren't things you needed to know about. He [End Page 262] bought you a white fox fur. He bought you a dishwasher. No dishpan hands for my girl, he said. He enclosed your hands in his, planted a kiss on your pretty palm. In later years your hands would be sharp and knobby, every bone its own defined ridge, but at this point they were still soft as a child's hands. Your lifeline—long, curving almost into the wrist. Your knuckles, dimpled. Your...

Towards a Greater Professional Standing: Evolution of Pharmacy Practice and Education, 1920-2020.

The history of community pharmacy in America since the 1920s is one of slow progress towards greater professional standing through changes in pharmacy education and practice. The history of American community pharmacy in the modern era can be divided into four periods: 1920–1949 (Soda Fountain Era), 1950–1979 (Lick, Stick, Pour and More Era), 1980–2009 (Pharmaceutical Care Era), and 2010–present (Post-Pharmaceutical Care Era). As traditional compounding has waned, leaders within community pharmacy have sought to shift focus from product to patient. Increasing degree requirements and postgraduate training have enhanced pharmacists’ ability to provide patient care services not directly associated with medication dispensing. However, the realities of practice have often fallen short of ideal visions of patient-focused community pharmacy practice. Positive trends in the recognition of the impact of community pharmacists on healthcare value and the need for more optimal medication management suggest that opportunities for community pharmacists to provide patient care may expand through the 21st century.

Anthropogenic gadolinium in tap water and in tap water-based beverages from fast-food franchises in six major cities in Germany

Gadolinium-based contrast agents used in magnetic resonance imaging are difficult to impossible to remove in wastewater treatment plants, and may enter groundwater production wells and hence municipal tap water via bank filtration. As anthropogenic gadolinium (Gd) may be accompanied by other, more harmful waste water-derived (micro)pollutants such as endocrine disruptors, we investigated the potential pathway of anthropogenic Gd into popular tap water-based beverages sold in highly frequented fast food restaurants. We, therefore, determined the concentration and distribution of geogenic and anthropogenic rare earth elements (REE) in tap water and in a related tap water-based popular soft drink (Coca Cola) from two fast food franchises (McDonalds and Burger King) in six major German cities. We observed anthropogenic Gd in both tap water and corresponding soft drinks in all investigated cities, extending the database for anthropogenic Gd in tap waters and highlighting its widespread distribution. In Berlin and Düsseldorf, where tap water is (mainly) produced by river bank filtration, 85 to 99% of the total Gd is of anthropogenic origin. The surprisingly high anthropogenic fraction (91%) in tap water from Munich reveals that even the shallow groundwater tapped in two Alpine valleys is eventually exposed to anthropogenic pollution. The REE distribution in post-mix soft drinks generally follows that of the corresponding tap water, except for enrichments of ytterbium (Yb), lutetium (Lu) and cerium (Ce), which are derived from the syrup. The concentration of anthropogenic Gd is similar in the soft drinks and in the corresponding tap water, demonstrating that the highly stable Gd-based contrast agents are not removed in soda fountains but are directly transferred to the beverages. This study highlights a pathway for anthropogenic waste water-derived xenobiotics such as pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors into the food chain, and hence, reveals the potential for human exposure to potentially harmful anthropogenic compounds.

A History of Howard Johnson's: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

Reviewed by: A History of Howard Johnson's: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco Ian Maxwell Radzinski (bio) A History of Howard Johnson's: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon, Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, American Palate, 2013, ISBN: 978.1.60949.428.5, 160 pp, $19.99 In an age where the proliferation of licensing one's name and image has become a standard business practice for various well-known media personalities, restaurateur and businessman Howard Johnson remains one of the earliest pioneers in the restaurant industry to build an empire through franchising. By enabling interested entrepreneurs to adopt his standardized business model, Johnson's restaurants spread in abundance throughout the country during much of the twentieth century. Anthony Mitchell Sammarco's A History of Howard Johnson's: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon chronicles Johnson's humble beginnings from running a drug store and ice cream stand in Wollaston, Massachusetts during the 1920s to, at the height of the company's success, opening 871 of his Howard Johnson's-themed restaurants and 438 motor lodges across the United States (150). Sammarco provides readers with a detailed biography of not only Howard Deering Johnson himself, who was appropriately considered the "Father of the Franchise Industry," but also an intimate portrait of Johnson's extensive business [End Page 131] network of individuals carrying a personal investment in his company, ranging from the Soffron Brothers Clam Company who supplied clams for Johnson's restaurants; to Lydia Pinkham Gove, who personally invested in Howard Johnson's most renowned location on Queens Boulevard, which was the largest restaurant in the chain and was positioned in such close proximity to the 1939–40 New York World's Fair that every visitor had to pass by the restaurant before entering the event; to the individual employees in each of the Howard Johnson's restaurants whose shared sense of responsibility mirrored that of the company's founder. While the initial success of Howard Johnson's was predicated on the restaurant's twenty-eight favors of ice cream, fair food prices, and family-friendly atmosphere, what set Johnson's chain apart from his competitors and, later, shaped the business practices of his successors, were a series of business decisions that enabled Johnson to essentially monopolize the restaurant industry. One of these decisions catered to the burgeoning segment of American families in the late 1930's who began to utilize the interstate highway as a means of transportation and leisure. Johnson was able to corner this travel market by obtaining an exclusive contract to operate his restaurants at service station runoffs on the Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania Turnpikes (69). By all accounts, his most important business decision was to exploit his successful and quite lucrative proof of concept of allowing other entrepreneurs to buy into his business model through franchising. By requiring those interested to front the start-up costs—purchasing all their supplies from his personally-owned commissaries, following a set of uniform guidelines for restaurant operation, and paying him a franchising fee—franchisees were able to open a restaurant with an already supportive consumer base (18). Although franchising has become a standard business practice for most successful restaurant chains, Johnson's decision to follow this business route was initially motivated by necessity—due to the Great Depression banks would not loan him money—but turned into a case of inspired ingenuity (59). Nevertheless, Johnson's decision to franchise his company's image, its operating practices, and requiring franchisees to abide by a set of standardized rules, illustrated in what was termed the "Howard Johnson Bible," allowed him to exert a controlling influence on restaurants not maintained directly under his management. Most importantly, Johnson could draw a portion of capital from those franchisees that would support his own business. A History of Howard Johnson's is organized into ten chapters, each of which provides insight into numerous facets of Johnson's own personal and company history. The book contains an ample amount of black-and-white, and color photography chronicling everything from the eclectic and evolving exteriors of the restaurants and motor lodges over the...

Diagnóstico de Establecimientos Tradicionales del Centro Histórico de Quito-Ecuador, Conforme a la Normativa de Zona Especial Turística

La presente investigación revela inicialmente un diagnóstico efectuado en la Zona Especial Turística del Centro Histórico de Quito, en las actividades turísticas de cafeterías y fuentes de soda, se aplicó dos cuestionarios. En el primero, se valoró los elementos para el cumplimiento de la Norma Técnica de Zona Especial Turística, y en el segundo, se evaluó los criterios de gestión, imagen comercial, producción y servicio de alimentos. El resultado evidenció el incumplimiento y las limitaciones en la prestación del servicio, lo cual reduce el nivel de satisfacción de los clientes y afecta la imagen de la Zona. Se constató las dificultades de ciertas infraestructuras patrimoniales en el cumplimiento de la Norma.

Joseph Jacobs: Apprentice to Crawford W. Long in Athens, GA; Pharmacist and Retailer of Soda Fountain Beverages in Atlanta, GA

In the 1870s, Joseph Jacobs was employed as an apprentice in the Longs and Billups pharmacy in Athens, GA. Jacobs later established a chain of pharmacies in Atlanta, GA. Coca-Cola was first sold to the public on May 8, 1886, at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in the Five Points district of Atlanta, GA. The soda fountain in Jacobs’ Pharmacy was owned by Willis E. Venable, who was related to James M. Venable, the first patient etherized by Crawford Long in Jefferson, GA.

Wayne Thiebaud: American Master

Wayne Thiebaud:American Master Karen Wilkin (bio) The best artists can change the way we see the world. If we look at enough still lifes by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin or Paul Cézanne or Giorgio Morandi, to name three obvious masters of the genre, we begin to measure our experience against their vision, testing our observations of actuality against their inventions. The banal kitchen bowls, apples, pottery, and bottles that populate these painters' canvases can seem more significant when we encounter them in works of art than when we see them on the kitchen table, so that when we focus on real objects, we find them wanting, in comparison to the artists' inspired fictions. Yet those objects can also resonate in new ways when we come across them in reality because we've been educated by the painted embodiments of the artists' perceptions; we notice what we might otherwise have ignored. The works that first established Wayne Thiebaud's reputation—forthright "portraits" of candies, pastries, diner meals, delicatessen counters, toys, soda fountain treats, and the like—have irrevocably altered our responses to these undistinguished emblems of ordinary America. Knowing that Thiebaud has spent most of his long life in California—he's a vigorous, tennis-playing 97, active in the studio—allows us to read these paintings as casual, modern-day, West Coast versions of Chardin's investigations of domestic objects and Morandi's meditations on oil pitchers and bottles. Thiebaud's deadpan images compel us to look with fresh eyes at a whole range of ubiquitous, uniquely American vernacular phenomena, from gumball machines to donuts, illuminated by the glare of commercial lighting. [End Page 411] Yet if Thiebaud alerts us to the importance of the fragments of ordinary modern-day reality that triggered his improvisations, he also insists that we acknowledge the importance of their new fictive existence determined by the presence of the artist's hand and the transformations that hand has wrought. Part of the fascination exerted by Thiebaud's best known works, with their neatly presented catalogues of desserts and soda fountain specials, their gorgeous touch, and delectable palette of colors, comes from his conflation of pure pictorial willfulness and apparent accuracy. He makes us believe in the truth of his observations, while presenting us with an alchemical transubstantiation of generously applied oil paint; unctuous pigment becomes something at once visually alluring and seemingly edible. Thiebaud's apparently inevitable placement of individual objects, his rigorous deployment of shadows, and his minimal suggestions of settings, along with his subtly intensified color, played against expanses of neutral background, all function abstractly. We can ignore the appealing, often witty subject matter and read these good-humored paintings without identifying the familiar things that Thiebaud has brought to our notice, concentrating instead solely on the pictures' faultless sense of structure and their super-charged, frequently pastel hues. The fantastic cityscapes and landscapes Thiebaud has made in the last three or four decades—vertiginous evocations of San Francisco streets, looming cliff faces, space-shifting allusions to the rivers and lakes near Sacramento—are compelling for similar reasons: a powerful sense of light, seductive color, rich surfaces, and a fusion of observation and invention. They embody the mood and affect of finding ourselves on steep urban roadways trapped amid tall buildings or viewing a landscape and waterways from a high vantage point, yet the more time we spend with these works, the more aware we become of Thiebaud's departures from actuality and the potency of his inventions. His San Francisco streetscapes are not accurate depictions but inspired departures from casual notations made on the spot, and it turns out that he has never looked at the area around Sacramento, where he lives, from [End Page 412] above. Like his San Francisco improvisations, Thiebaud's arresting images of the region are extrapolations from the cumulative experience of traveling through the landscape—experience and observation freely reconstituted as images of unstable spaces, mentally fragmented and reassembled in surprising but convincing ways. At times, we feel we're hovering over a river and its banks; at other times, we're sighting along the flat plane of the water, and more. Thiebaud's...

Borders and Crossings

Borders and Crossings Douglas Silver (bio) The switchboard lamps flash to life every hour on the hour, coinciding with the radio newscast. Americans are calling to speak to President Truman, to Vice President Barkley, to Secretary of War Patterson. Instead they get Operator #9, Genevieve Higgins, who answers with a sprightly "White House, how may I direct your call?" and then incurs a litany of grievances. They are angry about rocketing inflation, about Soviet rockets, the price of eggs, the cost of war. A man from Biloxi fumes over a Negro baseball player debuting for the Brooklyn Dodgers' farm team in Montreal. One surly woman, convinced The Postman Always Rings Twice harbingers a Communist invasion, is aghast when Genevieve tactfully declines to patch her through to the leader of the free world. "Next time you see Harry Truman," she says, "tell him Betsy Mare from Knoxville thinks he's just rotten." The woman's outrage is comical, much like her delusion that Genevieve and the president are acquaintances, that perhaps the message will be relayed during lunch-hour chitchat or hallway pleasantries. The dirty truth about the White House operators is that they don't work in the White House. They—Genevieve and eight other women, all her senior in both age and rank—are installed next door, seated at a wall-length console in an otherwise cramped subbasement of the Executive Office Building. This remove from the Oval Office has in no way discouraged her mother from crowing to the housewives at church group—specifically those whose sons are single and gainfully employed—embellishing her daughter's function of screening calls and plugging jacks to an appointment behooving Senate confirmation. One such housewife, a Mrs. Coleman, new to the church, takes the bait. Her son is a police officer. Prior to that, he was an Army private first class who assailed the beaches of Normandy. His name is Walter and, Genevieve's mother informs her, he will pick her up on Saturday evening. ________ Walter Coleman is husky, with an overbite like a ship's prow and, fittingly, a sodden voice that gurgles as if a lozenge were perpetually dissolving on his tongue. He opens the car door for her, the soda fountain door, waits for her to sit first, insists on paying for their ice cream before she has the chance to offer. His manners are mannered, as if he were adhering to a primer on dating etiquette. To Genevieve's amazement, she finds this endearing. Less so that he prefaces most statements with My mother told me . . . : "My mother told me you [End Page 68] sing like Billie Holiday"; "My mother told me you have a secret recipe for the best apple cobbler in the world"; "My mother told me you talk to the president all the time." Of course, Genevieve doesn't know Walter's mother from a sack of potatoes. He is merely reiterating the extravagant biography her mother fed his mother, an approach Genevieve reciprocates, their conversation more like decryption, translating the puffery of their mothers into the brass tacks of each other. As such, Genevieve clarifies that she sings along to Billie Holiday, that the secret behind her apple cobbler is that she lifted the recipe from a Betty Crocker cookbook, that only Mrs. Burston (Operator #1) and Mrs. Reynolds (Operator #2) deal directly with the president. None of this deters him. He, too, likes Billie Holiday. He, too, likes Betty Crocker. He voted for Harry Truman but hoped the president would've accomplished more by now. "I'll pass along your disappointment," she says. "No need. I haven't given up on him yet." Genevieve isn't sure if he is mirroring her sarcasm or oblivious to it. Either way, she is grateful when Walter slurps the last fudgy puddle of his sundae and they reverse course to her house. He escorts her to the door. In the dark his features seem less pronounced, the shadow chiseling his jawline. She thanks him for the wonderful night. "Maybe next time we'll go to a movie," he says. "My mother told me you have a real thing for Cary Grant." "He's...

Repeated detection of microbes in beverages dispensed from soda fountain machines and the effect of flushing on microbial density

Few studies have examined patterns of microbial contamination in soda fountain beverages. In this study, patterns of microbial contamination in beverages dispensed from soda fountain machines (SFMs) sampled in June 2009 and then again 13months later were compared. Over 70% of beverages contained microbes in both years, suggesting that contamination of beverages dispensed from SFMs can continue for long periods of time. In addition, the impact of disinfecting the dispensing nozzles and plastic tubing of SFMs, as well as the impact of machine use on microbial contamination was assessed. Managers from 26 establishments (fast-food and convenience stores) were interviewed about their SFM disinfecting practices and no correlation was found between the self-reported disinfecting practices and levels of microbial contamination in beverages dispensed from SFMs. Furthermore, in a direct study of two SFMs with an established disinfecting regimen, CFU/mL in beverages increased significantly immediately after disinfecting of plastic tubing yet returned to pre-disinfecting concentrations within 11days. These results suggest that disinfecting may disturb microbial communities, resulting in increased planktonic microbes, but not the ultimate removal of communities themselves. Additionally, samples of a sugar and a diet soda were collected from 15 different SFMs before and after dispensing of ~0.95L (the approximate size of a large beverage cup). Samples collected before dispensing this volume had significantly higher microbial counts than those collected after, suggesting that planktonic microbes in the beverage lines had been reduced by flushing. As there are currently no regulations regarding the disinfecting of SFM tubing or periodic inspections of beverages dispensed from SFMs, it would be valuable for consumers to encourage increased surveillance of SFMs, and to dispense some beverage before filling their cups.

AND THE LITTLE ONE SAID

1 0 8 Y A N D T H E L I T T L E O N E S A I D J E A N M c G A R R Y The day Mom made me a maple-walnut cake and threw it in my face, you stood there watching it chunk down on my shoes. My eyes burned for days, and I couldn’t get the sweet smell out of my nose. You made her do it. My mom – our mom – was a fifty-year-old widow with a widow’s peak, dark blond hair, and a toothy smile. The day my dad died, she had a date with my uncle, and had ditched him by the time we put Dad in the ground. Give her time, people said, she’s grieving. She was grieving, but it was because her forties (called her thirties) had become her fifties (still called her thirties), and no one thought she had us at nine or ten. Dad was a pharmacist – he loathed the word druggist, but we insisted, and called his shop the drugstore. There were three, and his was last choice, because no soda fountain, no liquor rack, no dirty magazines. Mom’s dad had the best drugstore, with racks of nylons and socks, T-shirts, and books with strippers and gunmen on the covers. I was in there all the time, mixing up shakes, and selling cigs and rubbers. Mom had always thought I was the loser, because tall and gawky like Dad – smart, too, and a born goody-good, while you 1 0 9 R were the type to win a prize in the turkey raΔe, just the first stroke in landing you in clover. More came along after the two of us, Frankie and Eddie, twins, living to butt heads and vie for Mom’s attention, of which she had almost none, being absorbed with little Millie, Doug, and Princess, who all came after, and none of them Dad’s – at least, that’s what he thought. Little Millie is still only four feet tall, but she has all her marbles,andisarealpet.Momhadtriedanabortion,butthedoctor was a quack, and poor Millie came out too early and half baked. She’s the most human of us all, the most reliable. She’s the one who wiped my face that day, and cleaned out my ears. It was gloppy stu√, and to that I attribute my on-again, o√-again hearing. We admired your straight shot, first out of the house, then out of the neighborhood – our city being a place with nothing for anyone, and yet no one but you ever left, or even thought about it. Dad died of the usual causes: drinking, heart trouble, diabetes, cancer, and the war, where – although a supply sergeant – he lost an eye and his left thumb. He wouldn’t talk about it, so there had to be a story and no glory, as we liked to say about anything that went wrong. Not that we said it to his face. He had a bad temper, and kept the strap looped over the kitchen door, and we learned to run like rabbits, leaving little Millie to take the heat. And he wouldn’t smack a midget, so all that rage was stored up and killed him in the end, because the one who really pulled his chain was Mom, but she was a sprinter in school, and first up the stairs and into the bathroom , door locked. (The others didn’t lock, but pounding up the stairs, Dad lost his breath and his balance. We always found him sitting there, or looking out the window, gasping. If looks could kill, we’d all be long gone.) Maple walnut was my favorite, and that meant we never got it – not in ice cream, not in cake, not even in pancake syrup. For that, we had Karo or molasses, which wrecked whatever was drowned under it, plus left a taste in your mouth for days. Mom hated cooking, so unless Dad had had a few, but not too many, and got up the dinner (beans and franks, fried eggs, or shit...

The Butter Printer:

ABSTRACT This essay follows the trope of industrial and convenience food in the work of middlebrow periodical humorists Robert Benchley, Margaret Fishback, and Ogden Nash. I argue that this trope reflects authorial anxieties and aspirations about the modern media's role in shaping consumer appetites and tastes. “Taste” takes on figurative connotations as these humorists meditate on modern foods in order to account for the place of mass production and commercialism within literary culture. Whether addressing chewing gum, soda fountains, or iceberg lettuce, these periodical writers confront the intimacy and ubiquity of modernity's changes and their professional implication in those changes.

Over-Engineering The Soda Machine

With a sleekness imparted by a Ferrari designer, a mixology controlled down to the microscale, and a stock of ingredients monitored with RFID tags, Coca-Cola?s new soda fountain, the Freestyle, is loaded with geek panache. Customers tap its touchscreen LCD panel to select one of 106 drinks, from caffeine?free Raspberry Diet Coke to Vault Red Blitz.

Remembering Isaac Asimov

- - - --;k -~~~1 --- -.4 - - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "N -A - --- - - - - - , . w- - s - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . - -... -- ---..- 4y .n - ; .......---..-.-.-.-.-.-. - 7 -- - - - - - --. - - -- -- - -I- --s Remembering Isaac Asimov Frederik Pohl SFgrandmaster Frederik Pohlco-foundedtheFuturiansfangroup in New York Cityin the 1930sand has recently begunwriting about theearly days of thegenre.Thisfirst installment of his new memoir isabout fellow Futurian Isaac Asimov. The way I met Isaac Asimov (1920-92) was theway Imet almost everybody else who became not only important tome as a teenager but a lifelong friend: like every other kid in theworld, Imet a lotof other kids in those years from, say, fourteen to nineteen in school, in theneighborhood, in theYCL, in the (don't laugh) Olivet Presbyterian Church Thursday-afternoon teenagers' class, which I attended until I was seventeen. But those friends came and went and were gone, while many of theones Imet through fandom were friends all their lives?Isaac, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, DirkWylie, Dick Wilson. In fact, there are one or two?Jack Robins, Dave Kyle?whom I still count as friends, seventy-odd years later, although none of us is very mobile these days, and it's been a while since we got together. I digress. (In fact,you may notice, I do so often.) In those days, the thingwas thatwe kids had been captured by science fiction.And when a burgeoning fandom gave us a chance to meet other captives, we signed up at once. Like most of us in the New York area, Isaac's firstclue that there was away to join others came from reading Hugo Gernsback's magazine, Won der Stories (the successor toAmazing Stories). In an effortto improve sales, Gernsback had started a correspondence club, the Science Fiction League, and allowed somemembers to charter local chap ters. One, theQ (for Queens) SFL,was in the New York area and became thepoint of firstcontact for most of the area's newbies because they'd read about it in the magazine. So theQSFL was where Isaac firstshowed up, butwe Futurians kept an eye on theirnew blood. Anyone who turnedup with an interestin writing SF as well as reading it, we kidnapped; thatwas one of the reasons theQSFL's heads, JamesTau rasi,Will Sykora, and Sam Moskowitz, weren't real fond of us. And Isaac made it clear thathe was definitely going tobecome a professional SF writer, as soon as he figured out how. At thattimeIsaac didn't givemany indications thathe would achieve that ambition,much less thathe would become I*S*A*A*C A*S*I*M*0*V. He was, if anything, deferential. Isaac was born Russian-Jewish, brought to America as a small childwhen his father, who had immigrated early, was at last able to send forhis family. Many of theFuturians had already begun to write SF stories, showing the manuscripts to each other and talkingabout the stories' successes (few) and flaws (many).One or two of us had actually made some tinysales. (Includingme. I had had a trulysappy poem published inAmazing Stories.)A few of us had begun teaming up as collaborators. Isaac yearned, but he had to miss most of that. His parents owned a candy storeat theeastern edge of Prospect Park, and theirchildren had tohelp with thework of running it. Isaac got to ourmeetings when he could, but seldom to the writing sessions. Candy stores are getting scarce in this twenty first century, in Brooklyn and everywhere else. They did sell candy?nickel candy bars at least? but thatwasn't all they sold. They were one of the places where you went foryour daily paper or favorite magazine, or for a pack of cigarettes (or fora single cigarette,price ltf,ifyour bankroll was low), or for a malted or an ice cream cone if, as they mostly did, the store included a small soda fountain.They were definitely a familybusiness, and both Isaac and his sister, Marcia, with a little help fromhis young brother, Stanley, had to be able tohandle all parts of thebusiness. The easiest part was the candy bars; hand over theMilky Way, drop thenickel in the cash register, and the sale was complete. The soda fountain took themost skill, and on hot summer days, when a lot of traffic might appear, itwas usually Isaac's mother...

Beverages obtained from soda fountain machines in the U.S. contain microorganisms, including coliform bacteria

Ninety beverages of three types (sugar sodas, diet sodas and water) were obtained from 20 self-service and 10 personnel-dispensed soda fountains, analyzed for microbial contamination, and evaluated with respect to U.S. drinking water regulations. A follow-up study compared the concentration and composition of microbial populations in 27 beverages collected from 9 soda fountain machines in the morning as well as in the afternoon. Ice dispensed from these machines was also examined for microbial contamination. While none of the ice samples exceeded U.S. drinking water standards, coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. Statistical analyses revealed no difference in levels of microbial contamination between beverage types or between those dispensed from self-service and personnel-dispensed soda fountains. More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested. These findings suggest that soda fountain machines may harbor persistent communities of potentially pathogenic microorganisms which may contribute to episodic gastric distress in the general population and could pose a more significant health risk to immunocompromised individuals. These findings have important public health implications and signal the need for regulations enforcing hygienic practices associated with these beverage dispensers.

Amino acid synthesis in a supercritical carbon dioxide - water system.

Mars is a CO2-abundant planet, whereas early Earth is thought to be also CO2-abundant. In addition, water was also discovered on Mars in 2008. From the facts and theory, we assumed that soda fountains were present on both planets, and this affected amino acid synthesis. Here, using a supercritical CO2/liquid H2O (10:1) system which mimicked crust soda fountains, we demonstrate production of amino acids from hydroxylamine (nitrogen source) and keto acids (oxylic acid sources). In this research, several amino acids were detected with an amino acid analyzer. Moreover, alanine polymers were detected with LC-MS. Our research lights up a new pathway in the study of life’s origin.