By Pauline Masson
Driving along East Union Street, one might easily pass by a small brick building that sits at the back of the lot east of D’Angelo’s Restaurant without giving it another thought. But the white painted structure, with its frontier-style raised center facade, is a relic of Pacific’s once flourishing downtown business district.
And it is a testament to one the town’s most progressive businessmen.
The single-story brick and cinder block structure began as a soda bottling plant at the turn of the last century when Pacific was a thriving frontier metropolis where most residents had good jobs with one of the town’s two railroads.
In addition to cheap travel, the railroads and a never ending stream of traveling salesmen, flooded downtown Pacific with every conceivable store bought luxury. Residents could buy the latest clothing, jewelry, shoes, toys, tools, furniture, butcher cut meat, and fresh bread baked. They could eat in style at dining rooms in four hotels and order a carbonated soft drink at the counter of two St. Louis Street drug stores. The popular drink, sometimes enhanced with ice cream, was delivered by a succession of local boys known as a soda jerks.
In the 1890s two inventions paved the way for residents to take their favorite soft drinks home. The cork bottle seal, or bottle cap, was invented to keep the fizzy drinks sealed in a glass bottle – that were at first hand-blown. But then a glass blowing machine was invented for the mass production of glass bottles.
As soda bottling plants sprang up all over the country a forward thinking Pacific businessman named G. C. “Gus” Rau built the Pacific Bottling Works on East Union Street to offer the new bottled soft drinks.
He advertised his Pacific Brand Soda Water as the most pure and healthful soft drink made. He offered to deliver cases to the customers’ doors. Rau was a busy man.
He was the city postmaster, school board president, and bank president. In 1924 when the traveling salesmen that brought all the luxury items to Pacific stores held their Drummers Convention here, Rau was tapped to entertain them for four days.
In 1924, Rau sold the bottling works to Dewey Steinhaus and the new owner began a vigorous advertising campaign touting its soft drink flavors of orange crush, root beer and ginger ale. Cost of a bottle of soda was five cents. The following year Steinhaus added a large new large “dandy” bottling machine to the works.
In 1926 Steinhaus planned to move to California and sold the bottling works back to Rau, who then hired George Leber, the Pacific city collector, to run the bottling business.
City tax office moved to the bottling works.
As the ultimate multi-tasker, it is understandable that Rau offered no objection when Leber suggested moving the Pacific city tax office into the bottling works building and running ads in the local newspaper to let residents know that they could get their city auto license and tags there.
By the 1948, when local resident Bob Myers was ten years old and had the freedom to roam about town, the bottling works was in its heyday. Young Myers often wandered into the bottling plant to watch soda pour into the row of bottles and the caps stamped on. By that time the bottling plant was offering the new cola flavored soda.
The tall skinny kid was a familiar visitor at the bottling works. He was one of the most frequent participants in a popular advertising scheme for the company’s Lucky Club Cola.
“If you saved enough bottle caps, you could take them to the building and get a free tee shirt with the Lucky Club Cola logo on it, Myers said. “It wasn’t a tee shirt like we wear today but was more like a tank top. It was an undershirt is what it was. I had quite a few of them.”
“I used to go down to where they played ball at John Thornton’s and pick up the bottle caps that they threw on the ground. Pretty soon, I’d have enough to get another shirt.”
It is not remembered the exact year the bottling plant closed. The Bay family bought the empty structure and use it as a warehouse for their tire and computer businesses located across the alley from the old building and facing Osage Street.
People continue to bring memorabilia from the old bottling works into the tire store. Donna Bay showed me an ancient wooden soda case with Pacific Bottling Works etched on the side that Harry Engelhart had found at an auction and brought to her. She also has some glass soda bottles with Pacific Bottling Works stamped into the glass. She had taken them home but brought one into the shop for me to photograph.
Although the taste of the soda and the free tee shirts are vivid in Bob Myers’ mind, the building had faded into memory. “I wasn’t sure it was still there,” he said.
I have one of the bottles also that I cherish
Thank you for writing this story like ve the history in our small town