Kathleen and Mabel went shopping at the Family Dollar store, and when they returned they said they had a surprise for me.
More like a miracle. The miracle of nectar being stolen from the gods on Mount Olympus. Or, in this case, Detroit Michigan.
They were brandishing a one-liter bottle of Faygo Rock & Rye soda pop, an elixir which I know from my own extensive safaris into supermarkets to be available only in the Midwest.
Having been born in Iowa City and spent 20 summers in Michigan, I’m a soda pop snob. I’ve had the best, and the best of the best are:
1. Vernor’s.
2. Faygo Rock & Rye.
(After that, Connecticut can have a turn. Insert your favorite Foxon Park soda into slot number three.)
Just as Vernor’s is too good, too distinctive, to be referred to merely as “ginger ale”—it’s like real Champagne versus “sparkling wine”—Rock & Rye rises above all other products which bear the label “cream soda.” The fact that they’re not easily gotten in most of the United States only makes them tastier.
I’m glad Kathleen and Mabel found the Faygo at the dollar store first, because if I’d seen Rock & Rye on a New England supermarket shelf myself I would have fainted.
So what does this all mean? Will Rock & Rye now be regularly available in my home state, meaning I don’t have to pay shipping fees for special delivery from online soda pop purveyors? (Went to Stop & Shop today just to check if they have Rock & Rye too. They don’t.) Or was this some extraordinary carbonated fluke?
In either case, my world has been rocked. And ryed.