Sarsaparilla Memories - Long!!

 When we were kids, my school friends Martin Oakley and Alec Jackson and I used to walk home from school.

It wasn't far but as 9 year olds we were supposed to get the bus. 

Some days we'd meander home via the River Erk and mess about along the water's edge or climb the sandy "cliff" above the flowing water. It was always a laugh if someone got a "booty". To us that was getting a wet foot. We didn't wear boots, but you get the idea.

This was Chadderton in Lancashire. It was 1964.

Other days Alec and I would walk home. Martin lived in the opposite direction from school. Firstly, we went to St Matthew's Infant School, and across the road, Chadderton Hall Junior School.

By 1964 we were at the junior school. 

On some of the days we walked home, we'd spend our bus fare, sixpence. Before decimalisation pence! That's 2½p in the decimal money we use today.

We'd either buy sweets in the parade of shops not far from Alec's house. Or we would go around the corner on Broadway to the Temperance Shop.

The Temperance Movement grew in many industrial towns after the industrial revolution. The towns that grew up around Lancashire on the back of the cotton industry brought jobs.

These can be seen on the old maps. But cotton mills and their chimneys filled the sky with smog! The mills needed coal for their steam engines. Chadderton also had coal mines to deliver locally.

The workers were mostly men, who would get paid and spend their wages in the pubs leaving their families in poverty. 

The Methodists were also anti-alcohol and along with The Temperance people opened shops where alcohol was banned.

This is where the sarsaparilla comes in. Yes, it took a while....

We would buy a glass. Made from syrup and water. Either still or gassy. The gassy one took longer to drink!!

There other choices. One called "cola" that once tasted was excluded and "dandelion and burdock" was the other. We alternated between the two.

And oddly it's "cola" that's become a multi-billion dollar business!

So recently I bought a bottle of sarsaparilla from Sainsbury's. It's Jamaican using Caribbean ingredients.

They do say that reminiscences might be faulty. 

Never go back to places you liked in your childhood. They will be different.

Sarsaparilla is the same. This stuff doesn't trigger any memories. It's sweeter. It's thicker. It's not horrible, but it's something left to a distant memory.

I won't be buying it again. My relationship with Dandelion and Burdock though is still alive and occasionally kicking.