It wasn't the flu, Mrs. Shady Nook. It wasn't a strike, Mrs. Mud Creek. It wasn't even a vacation. It was just a breathing spell. We can't say funny things all the time. We are not the four Marx brothers. We are just another well that ran dry.
-- Evelyn Ryan, aka the Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
Another memoir which, like My Life in France, shows that Fifties housewives had more options than we tend to think, especially if they were a little talented.
And resourceful. Mrs. Ryan couldn't afford to buy enough Dr. Pepper to get all the bottle caps she needed for clues to the contest answer, so she sent her kids out to pick up the caps around all the vending machines in town.
The part left to the expert -- Mom -- was coming up with the last line to an ad jingle.
Today, Dr. Pepper's still running contests, but they're nowhere near so artistic. You merely have to decode the yellow-on-yellow raised numbers on the cap, go online and key them into the box, figure out what you did wrong when it says that's not a valid number . . . It's still demanding, just not in a good way.
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