Frosty A&W Root Beer

Oh, Joanie. As soon as I saw your picture of the window tray with A&W root beer, I was transported in a flash back to early childhood.

The excitement of Dad driving into the Pontiac A&W drive-in. “Flash your lights for service.” He’d open his window for the tray with the foaming mugs of ice-cold root beer, in adult, child, and baby sizes.

In a growing family with limited means, having a heavy, cold mug all your own was a luxury. The littlest got tiny mugs of root beer free in those days, and could keep the mugs. We had a small collection.

Don’t recall too many food orders. My brother mentioned hot dogs once, and I think we shared fries, but the root beer was filling, and more delicious than root beer has been since.

Dad worked second shift at Pontiac Motors, so family outings were usually planned (the Detroit Zoo or museums, which deserve their own future memories), but when we went to the ice store in Pontiac, or had some other errand, a root beer stop was a memorable event.

My brothers and I decided that the carhop girls had the best job ever, since we were convinced they could eat and drink whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. A job perk, for sure.

A&W came into being in 1920 from Roy Allen and Frank Wright, (which explains the name) with a formula Mr. Allen bought in 1919 from a pharmacist named Charles Elmer Hires. That recipe included 25 herbs, berries, and roots in carbonated water.

Every root beer probably has its own “secret recipe.” Ingredients can include allspice, bark, coriander, juniper, ginger, wintergreen, hops, burdock root, dandelion root, sarsaparilla, vanilla beans, molasses, and licorice.

None of that mattered to me. What I remember is the cold, sweet, rich flavor of sarsaparilla and vanilla and magic.

Where I live now in Hernando County, Florida, there is, at least, one A&W drive-through restaurant, although I'm not usually in that area. I doubt I could reproduce the enchantment of Dad ordering mugs of root beer, passing back the heavy glasses to each of us in the back seat (“Don’t spill, now”), and letting everyone take as long as we wanted with our sipping. (Never lasted long, though. We were locusts when it came to foods and treats we liked.)

I’m sure that our parents also experienced childhood memories long vanished from the world my brother and I knew, and my children will never experience the same excitements I did, when Pontiac was a busy town with General Motors plants and downtown stores.

Family lived around the area. Grandpa worked at Fisher Body. We walked to LeBaron school when we lived on Third Street. Shopped at Sim’s downtown Pontiac, walking on wooden floors, and following the giant painted footsteps. Considered the Riker Building and Pontiac State Bank skyscrapers. Enjoyed the Christmas parade on Thanksgiving, all before I was nine, when we moved to the Heights.

All those memories rushed together when I saw Joanie’s picture of the A&W tray on the car window. Yes, Joanie, it certainly did bring back memories.

Can’t say it was an easier time, but it was a different world.

One I miss.

Thank you for sharing that magic moment! I can almost taste that first sip of root beer now.