Drink a Toast

"Back through the years I go wandering once again - back to the seasons of my youth."(1) My family moved to Riverside, New Jersey in the summer of 1960. I was 7 years old, and this was not just another move. We were going to stay here long enough for me to put down some roots for the first time. We moved more that Bedouins. Prior to this, I had lived in 9 different places, and by now I'd had my fill. I wanted to make some friends and matriculate from one grade to the next within the same school, like other kids did. Riverside seemed as good a place as any to do this.
Dad had been in the Navy and was now stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital - not as a doctor, but a patient. My father graduated from Annapolis in 1949, and then served in Korea, the Phillappines, and then all over both coasts. After being riden hard and put away wet one too many times, dad wound up in a psychiatric ward, only to be summarily discharged and then discarded as just another casualty of war. Riverside became our "port in the storm."
The Delaware river gave our town its name. Even though Philadelphia and all of its problems were on the other side, we shared the river and the 100 mile long chain of factories and mills that fed it with commerce and industrial pollution. We were blighted community, but in denial. Remember, this was long before Rachael Carson had written "Silent Spring. " But I liked Riverside. In the summer of 1960, I was hoping we would get to stay.
Our home was just outside the town limits. The very first day after moving our stuff in, we took a walk downtown. The streets were lined with working class houses and inhabited by Italian and Polish immigrants,and then subsequent generations thereof . The closer we got to town, the larger the trees grew, serving as living monuments that marked the beginnings of new lives in a new country. Riverside was a one stoplight town. It didn't take us long to scope it out and find the relevant points of interest. There was Saint Peter's Catholic Church, where I would spend the next 6 years of my life. It was a modern structure for its time, and served the spiritual needs of a predominately Italian congregation. The adjacent school was 3 massive stories high and built of brown brick. I had already begun to hate school, so it looked like a prison to me. The guards, I mean the nuns, lived in the convent across the street. Anyway, there in the shadow of the school was Faunce's Soda Fountain, a relic of a place that served the epicurean needs of the children of Saint Peter's Catholic School.
The interior of Faunce's was dark, worn and wooden. We were greeted by the proprietor who had a broken middle finger that had been set poorly, so that when he made a fist, the best he could come up with, was a perpetual "California Howdie." My older sister and I found that alarming, but somewhat humerous, and tried not to stare at it. After the usual pleasantries, he invited us to try a local beverege called "Drink a Toast." It was also known and marketed as "Take a Boost." I think they would change the lable on it, whenever sales would begin to go flat. Manufactured in Riverside, Boost, a.k.a Drink a Toast, maybe the only thing for which the town is even remotely famous. It was/is a dark proprietary concoction of caffeine and "fruit juices", (mostly corn syrup I'll bet) that when mixed with 4 parts water, and served over ice, tasted like one of the more fameous colas gone flat. We liked it. The only thing that could have enhanced the flavor might have been a little bit of cocaine, but I'm pretty sure that was just as illegal back then, as it is now. It had purported health benefits. (Remember now, that this was long before accurate labling was required by the FDA, or before truth in advertising had become popular.) Mr. Permanent Rude Gesture Man told us that it had been invented by a local physician who dispensed it to alleviate a whole host of stomach ailments. I'm convinced that it must have been none other than the infameous Dr. Hyde, considering the monsterous effect all that sugar and caffeine had on the children of Riverside. We were hooked instantly. So were all our friends and their families. You purchaced it in concentrated form by the gallon, and from legitimate businesses. (I'm not convinced that the Mafia didn't have some stake in it.) We soon discovered that you could dilute it in 5 parts water, thereby stretching it the way a savvy drug dealer might cut his merchandise. There was a local Pepsi bottling plant nearby, but that was for distibution elsewhere. We loved Boost.
After high school I worked in one of those mills along the Delaware. I was a melter, and nothing was more refreshing than ice cold Boost during the summer swelter. It also helped me stay awake during the graveyard shift. Eventually, I discovered that it mixed well with burbon, and a B&B became my adult beverege of choice. I'll bet that, unbeknownst to us, our parents had been spiking their's all along. Maybe it did have medicinal qualities after all.
Today I live in Florida, and mix my burbon with diet Coke. I miss Boost, even though I have a filling in almost every tooth. I miss Riverside, NJ. I miss the roving gangs of hopped up kids, and Faunce's pharmacy where we used to go get our fix. If you think I'm making this up.....
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:Yae2ch6jHM4J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takaboost+drink+a+toast+riverside&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

(1) First line of "My Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton