Motor City Tipple

Can you still get Vernor’s back home? I remember driving past the bottling plant on Woodward Avenue enroute to see my Detroit cousins, carsick as usual and regretting that second bowl of Cap’n Crunch. It was a glassy mirage, seen through the haze of mom’s cigarette smoke. I craved those sneezy bubbles and soothing ginger. The stuff was everywhere. My mother kept an old bottle filled with water next to her iron. But this was before the Riots, before we Canadian crackers were afraid to shop at Hudson’s, before we white-knuckled our way onto the I-75 towards greener suburban pastures.