Depending on where you go in the U.S., flavored carbonated drinks go by different names.

In some places they are called “Soft Drinks.” In other places they are called “Cokes,” regardless of the flavor, but in Heber and the surrounding area—including most of the state of Arizona—they were called “Pop” when I was growing up. At that time, pop came almost entirely in bottles and a bottle of pop cost ten cents.

Pop machines were about as common then as now. Most service stations had a pop machine and most stores had a pop machine that dispensed bottles of pop. At that time the pop machines usually carried a large variety of flavors. Almost any pop machine would have orange, strawberry, grape, root beer, 7up, Coke and Dr Pepper. Sometimes there were even options on the brands. I remember you could get orange pop, for example, from Kist, Nesbitts, Barq’s or Crush. Root Beer was available from Hires, Kist, Nesbitts, Dad’s or Barq’s.

For me at that time pop was relatively expensive, so getting a bottle of pop was a special occasion. Sometimes Mom and Dad would buy pop by the case. There was a bottling plant in Mesa that bottled some odd brand of pop and sometimes we would get a whole case (twenty-four bottles) of a variety of flavors. At that time, we had to pay a deposit for the bottles if we took them with us so it was not uncommon to see people drink their pop while standing around the pop machine to avoid paying the deposit. The deposit on a bottle was usually two or three cents per bottle.

I can’t mention pop without being reminded of Brother George Crandall. He was an elderly man who lived on the southern edge of Heber. He didn’t have a car and didn’t drive but he could certainly walk. For many years, he had the job of cleaning the church building which was almost directly across town from his home. He seemed to love Dr Pepper. Almost every morning without fail, he would walk from his house to the store where I worked to buy a bottle of Dr Pepper. He usually also bought a “Mounds” candy bar to go with it. It didn’t matter much what the weather was like, he was always there to enjoy his Mounds and Dr Pepper. He would then continue on to the church building to do his cleaning. I always hoped that when I retired, I would find something to enjoy on a daily basis as much as he seemed to enjoy his daily Dr Pepper.

For some reason I never quite understood, the Indians who shopped at the store seemed to especially like strawberry flavored pop. They for sure liked it the best of the fruit flavored pops. They drank lots of pop as did a lot of the people living in Heber.

Because pop was expensive, we made our own root beer (see “Homemade Root Beer”). We used bottles that were not accepted back by the store. With this background, you may understand what a “big deal” it was when the pop man offered to give Terry a six‑pack of pop for sorting the pop bottles (see “Pop Fights”).

One of the most popular places to stop when I was a kid was at the A&W Root Beer Stand just on the edge of Holbrook. They served root beer in frosted mugs, which was great, but they also sold root beer by the gallon. Almost every time we went to Holbrook to do shopping or see the doctor, we stopped at the A&W Root Beer Stand and bought a gallon of root beer. That’s about the only time we even came anywhere close to getting filled up with pop. I still enjoy pop and I still like a variety of flavors, but root beer is still one of my favorites. In those days there wasn’t any Sprite. That came out later to challenge the 7up market and I think it won.

Today I have gotten away from using the term “pop” as much as I used to. I tend to use “soft drink” more now. Maybe that says I’ve lived away from Arizona too long.

When I was a small boy and all during my growing up years, logging was the major industry in Heber. For most of that time the logging involved cutting large logs (18‑30 inches in diameter) that were hauled to one of the sawmills and cut up to make lumber. The “green lumber” from the Porter Sawmill was hauled to either Snowflake or Holbrook where the lumber was dried in a large kiln to produce the dry lumber used in construction. The “lumber truck,” as we called it, would make two or three trips to Holbrook each day taking the lumber from the sawmill to be dried.

Later, a pulp mill was built between Heber and Snowflake. It made paper from the logs. The logs for the pulp mill were usually only twelve to eighteen inches in diameter. The reason I mention all of this is because all of those logs and all of that lumber was hauled on large trucks that fascinated me and my friends. We would watch them with awe and we loved to hear the sound of those big motors.

Now among the trucks there were many different types or models. There were “Macks”, “Diamond T’s”, “Kenworths” and “Autocars” among others. One of the most popular was the “Mack Truck.” Now the Mack was a very strong truck and it had a bulldog as the hood ornament. As kids, we thought Macks were the best and strongest trucks in existence. Among all the trucks that passed through Heber each day hauling logs or lumber or pulp, only a few of the trucks were Diamond T’s. I don’t know exactly why there were so few of them. Diamond T’s had a design in the shape of a diamond with a T in the middle. Diamond T’s were not our favorite type of truck but they were OK since they had a pretty design on the front, and besides, they were still trucks. The Kenworths were very nice machines. They were workhorses. Reid Smith’s operation in Overgaard owned a whole fleet of red and black Kenworths. Porter’s owned only a few. We sometimes wished that Porter’s would get some more Kenworths. The Kenworths were very dependable. We hardly ever saw them broken down on the side of the road. The Autocars were somewhere in between Mack’s and Kenworths. Several of the Porter’s trucks were Autocars.

 For many years these types of trucks occupied the roads to and from Heber exclusively. No other type of truck dared challenge the territory of the Macks, the Diamond T’s, the Autocars and the Kenworths—until one fateful day. I can still remember that day. Word got around that Theo Reidhead had just gotten a new “lumber truck” but it was “different.” At the first opportunity, all of us kids headed for Theo’s house. Theo Reidheal drove the only “lumber truck” and he had a brand new light yellow truck that had “PETERBUILT” written right on the side in a little oval plaque. We had never heard of a PETERBUILT truck but as we gathered around it to admire it, we could easily see that it was far superior to the other trucks we were familiar with. It was absolutely beautiful! We even got to climb up and look in the cab because Theo was Charlie Reidhead’s uncle.

Since that day, no other truck has compared to the PETERBUILT in my mind. The other trucks kept right on running and doing their jobs, but we seldom stopped to watch them pass by, but whenever the PETERBUILT drove down the street two or three times a day on its way to Snowflake and Holbrook, we all stopped and stared with complete admiration. Even today when I drive up and down the freeways I still love to see the PETERBUILT trucks. They are fancier now and have lots of lights all over them, but I still believe that other trucks just can’t compare.

One of my early memories is the yearly visit by the Minnesota Woolen Mills traveling salesman and his wife. Maybe they were both salesmen. Anyway, every year in July or August, this man and his wife would arrive from Minnesota I guess. Their car was full of trunks and suitcases full of clothes. They would go from house to house in Heber to sell their clothes to the mothers of the town.

When they came to The Rock House they always seemed to be welcomed. They would bring their trunks and suitcases into the front room and open them up and we kids would watch in awe. They would then start their sales promotion by telling Mom about the different clothes. They would hold them up, let her take them for a look and then if she said no, they went in a pile and something else was pulled out. This is where my brothers and I got our school clothes. If Mom saw something she liked, she would tell them and the order would go into an order book. It was much better than shopping from a catalogue because you could actually see what you were buying before ordering. We got shirts, pants, underwear, socks and coats. Sometime in late August before school started, packages would begin arriving in the mail from the Minnesota Woolen Mills with the clothing articles families had ordered.

Since every mom in town was shown the same samples of clothes, it was not unusual to find out on the first day of school—and throughout the first few weeks of September—that others in town had ordered exactly the same shirts, pants or coats that you had received. Two or three kids might show up at school wearing the same type shirt or coat. The only difference might be the size. I guess we got used to it and I guess the mothers weren’t too concerned about having their kids dress differently because the same thing happened for many years. Maybe our mothers had read the scriptures and figured out that the best way to prevent their kids from getting caught up in the “wearing of fine twined linen” and getting “caught up in the pride of their hearts” because of being overly proud of their wearing apparel was to have a lot of us dressed more or less the same. Anyway, I don’t think we were afflicted with that particular problem when I was growing up and in grade school. We had no pride!

I don’t know whether the couple died or just quit coming to Heber but eventually we didn’t have the annual ritual. Minnesota was always a mysterious place in my mind and I assumed that it was a place where they manufactured a lot of clothes. When I visited Minnesota later in life I didn’t see a single clothing factory. What a let down! Anyway, the visits by the Minnesota Woolen Mill sales couple and their annual visits remain clearly in my memory.