Sophomoric Humor (Nearly) Averted

Friends,

Seriously, read Paper Cuts. On today's Paper Cuts blog, Dwight Garner talks about this coffee table book that details campaign memorabilia from the past. I'm sure it has some groovy anti-woman suffrage buttons and other thick-foreheaded causes, but the interesting part to me was when Garner pointed out the material from the 1964 election between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson.

Apparently, Goldwater & Johnson had dueling campaign drinks. Yes, custom beverages supporting their candidacy. So today there'd be things like Romney Ripple or Hucka-drink! or Obama-ade. Goldwater's, naturally, was called Gold Water. President Johnson, well, he went with this (image pulled from the Paper Cuts blog):
Now, I'm willing to bet you can see where I arrived to the "sophomoric" mentioned in the title. I had a few gems lined up for a meme like post. Here's one of them: "I hear that Johnson Juice has a lot of protein." Man, I couldn't let it go. A chance to make a crack about drinking semen just can't be passed up here. Anyway, all manner of jokes about it being salty or thick or if it will stain your sheets or if you should be worried about it if the juice is greenish-yellow. Dammit, I just can't help myself.

I did a little research about this because I was curious about Johnson Juice. For example, why they didn't go with, I don't know, Lyndon Lime. I found The Museum of Beverage Containers and Advertising. And on their site concerning the "Cola War" between Goldwater & Johnson, I was completely amazed at what I found. I've cut and pasted the pertinent information from their site below (notice the bold text):

Goldwater fired the first volley in the "Cola War" when he produced a soft drink called "'GOLDWATER", distributed by the Gold-Water Distributing Company out of Granite City, Illinois.
Not to be outdone, Johnson countered with "JOHNSON JUICE", distributed by the Ladybird Distributing Company, also located in Granite City, Illinois.

GRANITE CITY, ILLINOIS?!?! My hometown was the epicenter of the 1964 campaign Cola Wars? How can this be?! I never knew that. There are no plaques commemorating this. There are no markers or anything even hinting at the role Granite City played on the national political map. This is especially upsetting to me since clearly the cola wars is what drove Billy Joel made enough to tip over that table in his We Didn't Start the Fire video (no link here, Billy Joel is an asshole to YouTube) and my hometown caused this. This is monumental. Before, Granite City was only really known for a few things. First, the champion monster truck Taurus holds a residency there, football player/wrestler Kevin Greene passed through as a military brat, former Cardinal GM Dal Maxvill was born there, and a portion of the movie Larger Than Life was filmed there. We can proudly add this political achievement to the list, and it should be celebrated. Oh, Granite, how we are moving up!

What's even greater, at least to me, is that I've always thought my Aunt Connie looks a lot like Lyndon Johnson. So at one point in time, Aunt Connie and Lyndon Johnson were associated with the same place.


Viva el mustache!