From the Porch
No cocaine and holes in the lumber
Dwight Otwell

We paid good money to see a giant advertisement for a product that started out containing cocaine.

We also saw grown men trying so unsuccessfully to hit an object with a wooden stick that termites must have gotten to the lumber.

On the second day of our twoday Atlanta visit, we toured the World of Coca-Cola and later that evening went to an Atlanta Braves baseball game.

We ate dinner at the ballpark at the Chop House and met a couple who are missionaries to Budapest, Hungary. They were happy to be visiting the United States where they say people are very friendly. They are here for only a short time before they go back to Hungary to spread the word about Jesus Christ.

The missionaries didn't get their wish in seeing a high scoring game. The Braves lost 4-0 and had their worst hitting game of the year, managing only two hits. There were three homeruns but they were all by Arizona. The Braves had previously been hitting so good that they apparently drilled holes in their bats to give the opposing pitchers a chance. It worked.

As at Chastain Park for a concert the previous night, it was hot as blazes at Turner Field.

Before the game, we got to see David Justice enshrined into the Braves Hall of Fame. He was National League Rookie of the Year in 1990 when the Braves came in last place. However, the Braves had a big turnaround and won 14 consecutive division titles.

Justice is most known for hitting a homerun in the sixth and deciding game of the 1995 World Series to give the Atlanta Braves a 1-0 win and their only World Championship in Atlanta. Justice was married to movie star Halle Berry for awhile.

The World of Coca-Cola is a tourist attraction in Atlanta but you are paying to experience an elaborate advertisement for a soft drink.

We saw an Andy Warhol exhibition with his pop art, including art about Coca-Cola. We saw a 3-D movie about Coke. The seats moved, water sprinkled our faces and we were poked in the back. Sounds like fun, huh.

We had the opportunity to sample 70 different drinks from around the world. I believe I tried about 35. Many of them were so bad that I invented ugly faces to show my displeasure. I had heartburn that night.

Coca-Cola was invented by John Pemberton. In 1885 when Atlanta passed Prohibition legislation, Pemberton responded by developing Coca-Cola, essentially a carbonated, non-alcoholic version of French Wine Cola. The beverage was named Coca-Cola because, originally, the stimulant mixed in the beverage was coca leaves from South America. In addition, the drink was flavored using kola nuts, also acting as the beverage's source of caffeine. The first serving in 1886 costs five cents.

Pemberton never made much money from Coke, because he sold the rights of the formula to businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coke to its dominance of the soft drink world in the 20th century.

Coca-Cola was initially sold as a patent medicine for five cents a glass at soda fountains. Pemberton claimed that the drink cured many diseases, including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, headache and impotence. The first sales were made at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta on May 8, 1886. Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time in 1884. It wasn't until 1955 that Coca-Cola appeared in cans.

Pemberton's drink contained five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup, a significant dose. In 1891, Candler claimed his formula contained only a tenth of this amount. Coca-Cola did once contain an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass, but in 1903 it was removed.

After 1904, Coca-Cola started using, instead of fresh leaves, "spent" leaves - the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with cocaine trace levels left over at the molecular level.

To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a non-narcotic coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey. In the United States, Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant.