Pops

Saturday afternoon Mom and Mike took me to Pops in Arcadia. Pops is a gas station/convenience store/diner on Route 66 whose claim to fame is its stock of 500 different kinds of soda pop that patrons may purchase in bottles and its 66-foot soda bottle sculpture out front that lights up in changing colors at night. They have various eclectic things on their diner menu including Root Beer bread pudding and Warm PB&J on Texas toast. We sat down at a table and I had a chocolate malt. It was chocolatey and malty like a chocolate malt should be and nice and thick so you could eat it with a spoon. We bought a sampling of twelve different kinds of soda to take back to Norman for a mini tasting at dinner with Evan and Jenn. I'll try to remember all of them: banana, mango, wild strawberry, Red Barn root beer, chocolate, key lime, black cherry cream soda, Barack O'Berry blue raspberry/pineapple, Doctor Dublin, Nesbitt's orange, watermelon, and one other (maybe Mom or Evan can help complete the list). That evening Evan and Jenn met us at Mom's for dinner and we sampled four of the sodas. Jenn really liked the banana; it was very sweet and tasted like banana candy. The key lime was tart and not an all around hit although I liked it. All but Evan enjoyed the black cherry cream and I even made some of it into a float with vanilla ice cream, accentuating the creaminess and the deliciousness. Finally, we tried the Barack O'Berry which turned out to be quite a nice combination, the raspberry taste was the dominant one, but you could make out a hint of pineapple in the background. Mom and Evan will have to post appreciations of the other flavors.