Adam Alfrey on Mountain Dew

Today we learn the story behind the making of the soft drink Mountain Dew and its connection to Knoxville, Tennessee. We also learn about the graphic design behind the brand and its connection to Appalachian culture. And we learn a bit about the collectibles market for older bottles and signs. It's  a fascinating story and we guarantee you will learn something you never knew!

Transcript

Sarah Drury Campbell 0:07

Welcome to another Made in Tennessee podcast, the program that delves into the stories behind collectible art and antiques from the state of Tennessee, the makers who brought them to life, and the cultural and historical context that shaped their creation. I'm Sarah Campbell Drury, here along with Celia Walker. And today we're excited to be talking with Adam Alfrey, the Assistant Director for Historical Services at Knox County Public Library, which is headquartered at the East Tennessee History Center in downtown Knoxville. Adam is going to speak with us today about a national product that many may not connect with East Tennessee, or maybe you do, the soft drink Mountain Dew. Welcome, Adam.

Adam Alfrey 0:47

Thank you, Sarah. Really looking forward to this conversation. I hope uh we have some fun with it.

Celia Walker 0:52

That's right, Sarah. It's such a pleasure to be here with you, Adam. In your role, you've curated, designed, and installed more than 50 historical exhibitions at the East Tennessee History Center, including Vanishing Appalachia, the Photography of Don Dudenbostel, and Field Recordings of Tom Jester, Rock of Ages: East Tennessee's Marble Industry, Lloyd Branson: A Celebration of Life and Art, and Home Runs and Home Teams: A History of the National Pastime at Tennessee. You also serve as the project lead for the museum's signature exhibition, Voices of the Land: The People of East Tennessee. For those who've not seen that exhibition, I recommend it highly. You've also authored The Postcard History of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and helped found the Knoxville Holstons, a vintage baseball club that plays by the rules of 1864. I've even heard from a reliable source that you have nicknames on the team. Will you want to share yours?

Adam Alfrey 1:58

Sure. So I have to give credit to my good friend and colleague Myers Brown, who's the uh currently the director at uh Belmont Mansion. When we were uh starting the team, I sort of we were working on a project together and I said, Hey, do you have any uh good uh Civil War era nicknames? And he said, uh I W Butterbean. So uh Butterbean stuck from that moment, and it carried me all through my professional vintage baseball career.

Celia Walker 2:23

I love it. I love it. Um, Adam's an advocate of museums, libraries, and history-based learning, and currently serves on the boards of directors for the birthplace of country music and the Tennessee Folklore Society. He's also past president of the Tennessee Association of Museums. Will you tell us a little bit to start out about the Knox County Public Library and your role there?

Adam Alfrey 2:45

Absolutely. I have the fortunate pleasure of working at the East Tennessee History Center, which is a facility of Knox County Public Library. For folks who have never been there to visit, we're located right in the heart of downtown Knoxville. And I sort of tell uh people that we're a gymnasium for history buffs because within that facility, uh, we have several different ways that we can provide access to history. Uh so just very quickly on the top floor is the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection. That's the non-circulating uh branch of uh the history branch and genealogy branch of the library system. So really deep special collections, materials, holdings, genealogical holdings. They also have a subset collection that we're really proud of called the Tennessee Archive of Moving, Image, and Sound, uh recorded media. We collect home movies, which have become very interesting to us because sometimes that camera with a family out is the one-of-one recording of particular scenes that we didn't have documented anywhere else. So that's an amazing uh collection. Uh, then on the second floor, we have the Knox County Archives, the permanent government records for Knox County. Uh, they start in 1792 and march all the way forward to today. So uh we uh really enjoy providing access to that uh record as well. And then on the first floor is a Museum of East Tennessee History, a really nice regional museum. And so that's a long way to say what I what I do there is I can actually get a foot a little bit in all of those operations because I oversee the operations of the building, but then also have uh a role in helping make all that content hopefully come uh to life and be relevant to folks today.

Sarah Drury Campbell 4:24

Wow. And you have been instrumental in curating exhibitions that you know highlight the history of the county as well as its place within the history of the nation. I mean, that's that's kind of your your thing. And you have a uh new traveling exhibition, which we want to talk about today called It'll Tickle Your Innards: a Hillbilly History of Mountain Dew. Now, I think most of our listeners know what Mountain Dew is, but um probably very few of us know how Mountain Dew came to be. Tell us more.

Adam Alfrey 4:55

Yeah, so it's a really interesting, it's a long, winding story. So I'm gonna try to reduce this down uh to something that we can sort of get through uh with our time together today. But if we walked about um a mile east from where we're recording today, there's a historical marker that says Knoxville is one of the birthplaces of Mountain Dew. If you go to Johnson City, Tennessee, there's a historical marker there that says Johnson City is the birthplace of Mountain Dew. And if you go to Marion, Virginia, there's also a historical marker there that says uh that they are the home of Mountain Dew. And what's interesting to the story is all three of those markers are absolutely correct. And we'll we'll explain why that is here in just a second. But just to drop a sort of uh place marker in time to begin telling the story, you have to go back to Prohibition, uh national prohibition. And in Knoxville uh particular, uh the newspaper said we went bone dry about two years before national prohibition. But during that period, uh two things really begin to develop. Uh one of which is uh this romanticized version of the moonshiner. So when you cannot go out and purchase liquor because it's being banned, the only way, if you really want to have a drink, is to have uh an illicit source. And so this image of the person who's making illegal uh alcohol under the light of the moon really takes off. So that's important to our story, sort of that image of the hillbilly moonshiner. The other thing that prohibition does is it really um launches the carbonated beverage industry. Uh so when hard drinks, alcoholic drinks aren't available, soft drinks become the all the rage. And so individuals would go down to the corner drugstore and ask for a soft drink, which was usually just a carbonated beverage with some sort of fruit mixed into it. And just to give you uh sort of some stats about how meteoric rise that was to this taste for soft drinks, in 1890, uh Coca-Cola only sold 9,000 gallons of syrup uh for their beverage. But by by the middle of uh Prohibition, they were selling millions of gallons. So it really took off this taste to have this drink. So the other portion that we need to know for the story is the bottling industry itself. So, with the rise of soft drinks, uh, people wanted to take them with them. They didn't always want to go to the corner drugstore to get one. So the bottling industry really came to life during this period. And uh, two of the things that I found really fascinating in doing the research for this um first, that formulas can be copyrighted, but flavors cannot be. So, for example, Mountain Dew or Coca-Cola, they can copyright the particular formula that makes those beverages, but they cannot copyright the Coke flavor or the lemonade flavor or a lemon lime flavor. That's why when you go to your grocery store today, you can walk down the aisle and see several and uh several companies producing a grape-flavored drink or an orange-flavored drink with variation. So that's something important to keep in mind because that's going to come back up in our story. The other interesting thing very early on is a lot of these bottlers were working off of what they called a flavor model. Uh so basically they would find a clear bottle that they like the shape of, they like the design of, they would make their logo, and then they would buy that clear bottle in large volume and then run different flavors in the same clear bottle. So, for example, uh, if you had a company that was called the Adam Bottling Company, you would buy thousands of that bottle. And then when the consumer picked it up and saw through that clear bottle that it was orange, they knew they were getting your orange drink. Or the when you saw it was purple, you were getting your grape drink, or vice versa. It really uh allowed them to have an economy of scale and then run different flavors uh in there without changing the labeling. Um, so again, that will come back in uh into play. And perhaps one of the most unique examples of that is there was actually a Mountain Dew uh that preceded the modern Mountain Dew that we're about to talk about. It happened in 1927 here in Knoxville. Uh, there was a uh a family who had moved into the area from Hungary. His name uh was Max Licht, L-I-C-H-T. He actually had a uh sort of condiment business. He was making vinegars, pickles, uh, different uh brine uh things. And his son encouraged him to get in on this rage of beverages. And so they started a soda line in 1927, and their shtick for the time was bottles like barrels, playing to that sort of prohibition imagery. And in uh the fall of 1927, they actually advertised a Mountain Dew, which was going to be a lemon lime flavored drink, probably like Sprite, and it was supposed to be a great thirst quencher. And that same bottle, they also advertised a honeydew version, a great version, all these other different flavors. But unfortunately for us, um that business went flat in 1928, and so that sort of wrapped up that portion of the Mountain Dew story.

Sarah Drury Campbell 10:33

Went flat. I I see what you did there.

Adam Alfrey 10:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Celia Walker 10:42

So these are soft drinks rather than hard drinks.

Adam Alfrey 10:45

Yes.

Celia Walker 10:46

That's how they get the name soft drink?

Adam Alfrey 10:48

Correct. Yeah.

Celia Walker 10:49

The other question I have is this Hungarian connection. Uh my great-grandfather came from Hungary to Knoxville. And um I wondered if there was, I mean, there sounds like there's a lot, a strong Hungarian population here at that time.

Adam Alfrey 11:03

Yeah, uh Knoxville was with the factories, the coal mining, and the trains, it was really becoming an influx of different immigrant communities moving here post-World War I, looking for an opportunity. So you go through the newspapers and there were clearly sections where social groups, family groups were organizing around their German heritage, Hungarian heritage. So it was a very diverse population at the time.

Sarah Drury Campbell 11:30

So, Adam, how did we get to the modern version of Mountain Dew?

Adam Alfrey 11:34

Yeah, really interesting story. And it starts with Barney and Ollie Hartman. Uh, they moved to Knoxville five years after that sort of experiment that happened with the Lichts. So in 1933, they moved to Knoxville. They were born, uh, the family was originally from Illinois. They went to Georgia and learned the bottling industry. And when they came here, they took over an existing Orange Crush and Pepsi distribution company. Their bottling works were right out of here off of Magnolia Avenue. And in fact, the building still stands today, right where that historical marker is, they're on Magnolia Avenue. And what's interesting about them is when they were in Georgia, there was a particular product that they liked. It was called Natural Setup. It was a sprite-based type flavor profile. But when they moved here, there wasn't a natural setup distributorship. So they decided that they would start making their own version of natural setup, which in the in their shop, they called it their personal setup. Well, when drivers, delivery guys, businessmen would come to the shop at the end of the day, uh, the personal setup would be shared around with a bottle of bourbon. And the story goes that someone said, Well, this stuff is just as good as Mountain Dew. So, fast forward to 1946, the National Beverage Convention was being held in Gatlinburg. And Barney and Ollie Hartman decided, wouldn't it be fun if we bottled some of our personal setup, some of this Mountain Dew, and took it up and shared it with our colleagues? Well, at the time it had just been produced for their own use. So they needed a bottle and they needed an image to sell it. And they actually turned to their neighbor, a high school student whose name was John Bricketto, and he slapped together a little paper label that said Mountain Dew. He introduced the image of the hillbilly, and he started the tradition of putting who the bottle was brewed by. So those first bottles said brewed by Barney and Ollie. Well, they took it up to the convention and it was a hit. People loved that sort of sprite flavor. They loved the marketing of it, and they really saw promise in it. Well, the drink went through some fits and starts because it was sort of their personal joke and they wanted to keep it to themselves. And unfortunately, uh Barney died just a few short years after that. And Ollie became very sentimental about the release of this beverage that they had created together. So that's sort of the Hartmann's contribution and the Knoxville contribution to this is the idea for the drink, the marketing uh genius of it, of putting together the the hillbilly image and that uh signature line that makes the bottle so unique about who's producing it. So let's fast forward to 1960. The Hartmanns were friends with a number of the bottlers in the region. It was a sort of tight-knit working group. And they had worked with Charlie Gordon and Bill Bridgeforth in Tri-City Beverage up in Johnson City. At the time, Tri-City was using that flavor model. They had bottles that just said Tri-City Beverage, and depending on what color liquid was in it, was what you were drinking. And they happened to have this really bright yellow lemonade that was highly caffeinated. People loved the flavor of that drink, but they thought the bottle was really boring. And so Bill Bridgeforth had this idea. He said, Well, you know, we've got this great beverage, but it needs a better marketing campaign behind it. And so they reached out to Allie Hartman and said, Hey, can we marry the two of these together? So in 1960, we had for the first time the flavor profile that we know today, the citrus lemonade, moving into the Hartman's bottle with the hillbilly on it. And so that's sort of where we get to see those two things come together. Fast forward again another four years, and we'll go to Marion, Virginia. By that time, both the Tri-City Beverage Company and the Hartmanns had shifted ownership of the beverage to the Tip Corporation in Marion, Virginia, where Billy Jones was the head of it. He had been instrumental. He was sort of known as the mixologist. He was the guy who built these flavor profiles for these other uh companies, but ended up um owning all the rights to Mountain Dew. And that's in 1964, is when Pepsi came a calling and they purchased uh Mountain Dew from the Tip Corporation. So going back to that uh original sort of scenario that we set up, all three of those uh communities did have a role in creating this national brand. But we like to say in Knoxville that the genius, the idea for it really started here.

Celia Walker 16:20

Was that how you became interested in it because of the Knoxville connection?

Adam Alfrey 16:24

Yeah, and there's actually an interesting backstory to that. So uh I went to school at the University of Tennessee where I was in the art history uh program, and I was always hanging around uh the UN Gallery of Art and Architecture, and the uh director at the time, uh Sam Yates, um he had come into contact with Dick Bridgeforth, who's the son of Bill Bridgeforth there in uh Johnson City. And Dick had amassed an amazing collection of Mountain Dew memorabilia, not only of his father's career, but nationally. And Sam had the idea, uh just because of how iconic the imagery is around this brand, of putting together a show that looked at the graphic design of the brand. And so we put together this show. I helped as a student, and uh it was really great to see all the students come down, especially from the graphic arts, to look at the nuance of design and how it changed over time and how storytelling impacts uh that product. And uh so when I started working at the History Center, I always remembered that show and I thought, wouldn't it be really cool to go back and re-examine this product and really look at it through the lens of traditional moonshine making, through the lens of prohibition, through the lens of mass production and mass marketing as it changes. And so we took a little bit of a history angle to it. And in fact, we actually went back and worked uh with uh Dick Bridgeforth, and he was so kind. We reached out to him at a time in his life where he was looking for a home for these collections. So half of his collection went to the East Tennessee History Center here in Knoxville, and then the other half went to East Tennessee State University at the Reese Museum there. So a little bit of the collection went back to both of those sort of home cities for Mountain Dew.

Celia Walker 18:15

And what a great thing for Knoxville to have those items here. I'm so interested that Sam Yates was thinking so far ahead of his time, really, to think about graphic design and and how this evolved into a really uh popular cultural symbol. And and in fact, Mountain Dew's been seen in a in a number of different types of things, movies. I mean, it's all over the place.

Adam Alfrey 18:38

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that allowed for its meteoric rise and what Pepsi really was smart in taking the brand on because the two sort of collided at the same time. If you think about what's going on in the entertainment field, uh when Pepsi acquires this, if you turned on the television, you'd have been watching Hee-Haw, the Andy Griffith show is on, the Beverly Hillbilly is on. So culturally, Hillbillyism was a fad uh at the time. And so they really uh leaned into it. Uh, there's a in fact, uh, Pepsi actually encouraged their bottlers to pull hillbilly pranks to market the beverage. And one of the best ones that I think is uh it's just an absolute hoot. So in uh the the bottler in Philadelphia, uh Pennsylvania, he decided that he was going to create this character called Herbert Eugene Walton from Turkey Scratch, Tennessee. And he was gonna pull a prank on the entire city. So he started by sending out letters to the licensing commissioners asking to build outhouses on public lands across the city. And when denial letters started coming in, he hired an actor to drive a bright red Model A4 downtown with a load of Mountain Dew. Uh, he pulled up on the steps of City Hall and started protesting, saying that they should legalize Mountain Dew and they were handing these bottles out to everyone while they were shouting unfair to Turkey Scratch. But that was the type of embracing this trope, this this image that Pepsi encouraged, and it went a long way to really make it a national brand. But then the other thing that's sort of interesting about Pepsi is they were they're very were smart to follow trends. And so when the when the fad of of the hillbilly was starting to be out of fashion, they quickly realized that this is a very highly caffeinated beverage. It has a large falling. And so they started moving into high-energy things. So that was sort of its second wave of being reintroduced is the snowboarders, the skateboarders, becoming sponsors in the NASCAR league, and it really took on a whole different life. But what's really interesting to me is every once in a while, Pepsi still rolls out the hillbilly. So uh there was a whole Johnson City line that was produced not too long ago. It was called Johnson City Gold Mountain Dew. If you've even seen some of the billboards around, they'll now say brewed in Knoxville for the first time. And even recently, I just called a commercial on TV. It doesn't name check Tennessee, but it's it says uh it's a beverage that started in the mountains of America or the hills. So it gives a nod to sort of that rooted in place uh type branding.

Sarah Drury Campbell 21:35

Well, I think certainly Mountain Dew has more of a personality branding behind it than any of the other soft drinks. And, you know, it it's funny. There was recently a Mountain Dew sign that an advertising sign that just sold for over $15,000. So collectors are are really starting to maybe take note of Mountain Dew. I mean, some people have collected it, you know, going way back, but I think collectors. Today are maybe starting to have a greater appreciation for the Mountain Dew graphic items. There certainly are some bottles out there that you can buy, some of the early bottles. Those are fairly affordable, but the signs are becoming increasingly more valuable. And I think part of the appeal is that graphic image of the hillbilly. And that seems to be, in fact, we'll put a photograph up on our Facebook page so that people can kind of see what I'm talking about, the different images that evolved over the years of hillbillies drinking Mountain Dew, ones drinking from a jug. You have the bottle images, and they're becoming collectible now. So with the sale of some of these signs, I think we're starting to become more aware of the uh collectible appeal of Mountain Dew and its memorabilia.

Adam Alfrey 22:57

Yeah, absolutely. And I give a lot of the credit to that to Dick Bridgeforth. Uh he, as a collector, uh really dug into some of the nuances uh that Sam was sort of looking at in terms of graphic design, and uh that even though these things are mass-produced, they each of them sort of had a story on their own, especially because of that brewed by or bottled by line. And so uh, for example, if you were a producer in North Carolina and you had a a salesperson who outperformed um in his delivery routes or in his sales rights, that was an incentive to say this was brewed by, and then that delivery person got to pick the names that go on the bottle. And quite often it was names of family members or workers. And so they weren't always arbitrary or for marketing. Some of them have a real deep personal connection. And I think Dick was one of the first to really systematically go through and create a language on how to catalog those stories and really look at the different bottlers and traditions that developed within this mass thing. There is something that's uniquely individual about it. And for me, the other thing that was really interested in working on this project is that uh people come become very attached to this brand. Uh, it almost becomes a lifestyle for them. We had a family that drove down um from Ohio to see the exhibition because this was their whole family's vacation because they're they were Mountain Dew Uber fans. I mean, they were just super fans of the brand. And then one of my favorite memories of all time is I came down to the gallery and there was this uh beautiful young woman standing there in a dress that she had made out of Mountain Dew labels that she had collected and bottle caps. And that was going to be her prom dress, but she had uh created this beautiful piece of artwork and brought it into the exhibition to take her prom images. Uh so it's really interesting to see how people develop a relationship with something that is so national and is so everywhere, but they make it really personable.

Sarah Drury Campbell 25:11

So, what kind of objects can we expect to see in the exhibit?

Adam Alfrey 25:14

Yeah, so uh the exhibition is really uh chronicled or it sort of follows a chronological timeline. So early on, we look at early images and early depictions of the hillbilly in in print and in media. But the core of the material around the Mountain Dew is, of course, the bottles and a lot of the advertising materials uh during especially that Pepsi era when they were uh uh trying to create these really elaborate displays for uh grocery stores and other outlets, they created some very unique one-of-one items. There was also opportunity uh for uh consumers to ride in and purchase uh items that Pepsi had made. And those are very collectible, collectible because not a number of them were made and not a lot of them were kept. Um, and just to give you an example of one, there was Pepsi actually produced uh how to throw a proper Mountain Dew party booklet, which I just absolutely love. But it had recipes on how to use uh Mountain Dew in your cooking, how to keep the kids entertained and make sure that they were good little hillbillies while they were at this hillbilly party. It was uh just a neat little thing that not a lot of people may have kept because it was just a small little uh pamphlet, but it really illustrates how they were really trying to make this a participatory type type product.

Celia Walker 26:40

I think some of our listeners may find things about Mountain Dew in their homes. So often we see things that our parents, for whatever reason, have kept, and we get them and we think, oh, that's has no significance whatsoever. But to think that they might come to this exhibit and reconnect with something that meant something to their family.

Adam Alfrey 26:59

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just sharing that story of uh, like you can imagine your parents or grandparents throwing a Mountain Dew party and they kept it because it was such a good night with friends, or perhaps they kept the bottle because it was someone they knew that worked at that plant. I know personally, my uncle worked at the local Pepsi plant. And he, when he retired, they ran a special Mountain Dew bottle for him that it had his name on the top of it, and he always kept that as a point of pride in his his home. So a lot of these times, these things that we do see sitting around our families' homes, if we don't ask what those stories are, we lose that significance, but they can have a lot of meaning.

Celia Walker 27:38

Maybe even genealogical.

Adam Alfrey 27:40

Yeah, exactly.

Celia Walker 27:41

It's amazing. Um, last question. Uh, we've talked about Mountain Dew's origins in East Tennessee. What would you say is its importance to cultural, Tennessee's cultural heritage, and what does it tell us about the evolution of businesses in the South?

Adam Alfrey 27:56

I think for me, working on this project, the things that I kept going back to is uh what are we doing with this hillbilly stereotype? Uh, because a lot of that is rooted in this idea that we're an isolated backwoods region uh that allows this thing to sort of grow and become the hillbilly. But at the same time, when we use that that hillbilly stereotype, it turns into this thing that becomes an international phenomenon. I mean, if you look at the rankings, Mountain Dew usually is in the top 10 beverages worldwide every year. So that sort of dichotomy of this like image that is backwards and isolated can then be used to fuel something that's international, is really interesting to me. And we have a small portion in Voices of the Land, the permanent exhibition there at the History Center, about the hillbilly stereotype and that hillbilly image. And I think it connects with people because it also resonates in country music. A lot of that early country music when it's being mass marketed across the nation, it plays to those sort of down home, homespun jokes that sort of uh play. Uh, but then you see it very much alive even today if you go up to Pigeon Forge and uh to Gatlinburg. We really lean into that. And one of my favorite objects and voices sort of illustrates that tug and pull. Cora Ogle was a uh maker of small objects up in Gatlinburg. And she used to make these, she called them hillbilly piggy banks. They were basically a small Clorox bottle turned on its side, painted pink, and she'd put some googly eyes on it and little feet, and would sell it to tourists coming up there. And she said, you know, she or her quote is although uh people sort of point and laugh at us for selling these little things, but what they don't realize is I've put my entire family through college uh by selling these little mountain crafts. And so I think that really gets at sort of this tug and pull back and forth through it. And then the other theme that I thought about that really comes to play for those of us who work in the museum industry and the archive business is really some of the things we started talking about today, is this also tug and pull between what's personal and what's mass-produced. Uh, because when a product does become mass-produced or mass-consumed, you begin to question do we collect that? Because that's available in Kentucky or Georgia or Nebraska or anywhere. So is that something that we should be putting into a public collection? But then when you do start hearing those stories of how individuals have related to this product or how they've kept it over time or really built meaning to it, that's real, really where sort of the magic happens. And so that's what I've always hopefully want to share and talk about and make folks uh really advocate is really keeping stories with objects, because otherwise they lose their meaning and their value. And it's really important that we become sort of uh preservers of our own stories so that we can pass that down to future generations.

Sarah Drury Campbell 31:10

And so often it's the object that really helps us connect to that history and become more curious and involved, which is what this talk today, I think, really illustrated very well.

Adam Alfrey 31:21

The interesting legacy of the Hartman's, I actually think they would be really proud about where Mountain Dew ended up. They were very um uh very proud of the brand. In fact, when when they sold off their rights to the marketing and of the beverage, they kept for themselves the personal right to produce Mountain Dew locally. And they never moved away from that personal setup, that lemon lime flavor. So there was actually a period of years there in the mid-60s, that around the nation or even as close as Johnson City, if you bought a bottle of Mountain Dew, you would drink the citrus lemonade or the citrus lemonade highly caffeinated flavor. But then if you went back down to Knoxville and picked up a bottle of Mountain Dew, it was that personal setup, the lemon lime flavor. They never once produced what we know as uh the modern Mountain Dew. But what I meant by saying that they would be sort of proud of where Mountain Dew ended up, um, they, when they created that first hillbilly bottle, uh, they intended for it to be a flavor model beverage. So they were going to produce a clear bottle with that hillbilly on it and the Mountain Dew, and they were gonna run different flavors of Mountain Dew through it. And today that's what has happened. You can go get Code Red Mountain Dew or Baja Blast. And so, in many ways, their dream for that beverage uh eventually came true.

Sarah Drury Campbell 32:46

Thank you so much for sharing this story with our listeners today.

Adam Alfrey 32:49

Absolutely, it was a great time.

Celia Walker 32:51

Our show is edited by Ben Hill. The music is by Kylie Daly. This program is sponsored by the Tennessee Commission of the United States Semiquincentennial, arranged under an agreement with the state of Tennessee. Thanks to the folks at the IT company in Knoxville for recording this episode, and thanks to all of you for listening. You can find this episode and others at our madeinessee.org website, that's all one word and all lowercase, and find us on Facebook, where you can find additional images relating to our episodes.