Koo, koo, ka-choo, Mrs Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)
Ah, Joe Dimaggio's least favorite song...
Speaking of obscure (or regional) sodas, has anyone ever had birch beer? It's not unlike root beer. I had it back in 1969 when I was a camp counselor in Northern Pennsylvania. I had an afternoon off and went off for a rural hike. Stopped at a market for something to drink, and there it was. Made locally and colorless. What a treat!
I have had it but it's been so long I don't remember what it tasted like. Real sasparilla is another one that comes to mind.
Right, cjhsa, I'd forgotten about sarsaparilla. I vaguely recall cartoons where some cowboy would demand one at the bar, of course spraying saliva all over everything as he spat out the word!
Isn't sarsaparilla similar to root beer? I had it once, but don't recall. I don't think I've ever had birch beer - but I do recommend ginger beer; it has quite a kick.
I think root and birch beer and sarsaparilla are all pretty similar, but it's been many years since I had anything but root beer, of the three. I'd love to do a blind taste test right now!
Sarsparilla root is the 'root' in Root Beer. Modern Sarsparilla is usually identical to Root Beer. The Sarsparilla they order in the old Western movies would have been similar, but not carbonated.
Just for fun, I went to Merriam Webster online and looked it up, as all three spellings used here seem to be used interchangably on the web. The correct spelling is "sarsaparilla". I suspect that some of the other variants were probably product spellings that we may have seen before.
My guess is that "sarsapirilla", the original spelling, evolved because most people pronounced it "saspirilla". They certainly did in those old Westerns I remember!
Francis "Sass" Parilla was a gangster in the Old West.
I've never heard it pronounced any way other than the way I spelled it in my first post "sasparilla". But I'll admit to yet another spelling error. My record has been horrible lately.
Just avoid the SARSparilla....
sniff. that was going to be my joke...
