Moxie

Sometime last week (Thursday, I think), a momentous occasion occurred in the LutheranHusker house:

I drank my last can of 2001 vintage Moxie.

For the uninitiated, Moxie is a type of pop that is only available in New England. And even then, not every store has it. It comes in an orange can, but it's not an orange flavored drink. It looks like cola, but the taste is more of what you might get if you crossed Dr. Pepper and root beer. It's one of those things in life that people either love...or hate.

I love it. Love love love LOVE it.

Sweetie, not so much a fan. If you were to ask her, she'd tell you Moxie bears a very distinct resemblance in taste to Robitussin.

She's wrong, of course, but I love her anyway. If you ever talk to her, don't let her mislead you like that. She means well, she really does.

With the advent of the internet and e-commerce, Moxie has become a lot easier to come by than it once was--in theory at least. I know where I can get it, but justifying the shipping cost is quite another thing. Luckily, I have a loving grandmother who has helped me keep a necessary stockpile through Christmas and birthday presents (thanks, Grammy--I love you!) but it's still necessary to ration it very carefully.

So what's with the vintage 2001 Moxie? Well, that summer, Sweetie and I and Lil' Sis and her husband loaded up the ol' Nissan Xterra and road-tripped out to Massachusetts and Maine to visit family and reconnect with our roots. While there, we of course knew we needed to find some Moxie to bring back with us (by "we" I mean Lil' Sis and I...our poor, misguided spouses shared that whole "Moxie=Robitussin" opinion). My dad's also a Moxie fiend, and his birthday was coming up, so we figured that would be a great gift for him, too. We found some at a grocery store in the town where my grandmother lives, but not near the quantities we were looking for. So we found the store manager and asked if he could order 4 cases of it for us.

You could've knocked the guy over with a feather.

"Four cases?" Apparently nobody had ever walked in and asked for that much Moxie in the history of forever. So we explained the whole thing to him--how we were from the Midwest, but our parents had grown up in Massachusetts and had gotten us hooked on Moxie and we were back to see all the old sights and introduce our spouses to our "heritage," and if it would be possible to have 4 cases of Moxie delivered to the store in the next 5 days we'd really appreciate it because we had to drive back home and wanted to bring a bunch of it back with us.

He said, "I'm not sure how or where I'm gonna get it, but if you come back in 5 days you will have your 4 cases of Moxie."

He was true to his word. So, with 4 cases of Moxie tied very securely to the roof, we drove back to Nebraska. We spent the night an hour outside of Niagara Falls on the way back and one of the Moxie-hating spouses "accidentally" dropped a can in the motel parking lot while we were unloading stuff out of the Xterra for the night.

Suspicious, to say the least. =)

But, other than that mishap, the Moxie made it back to Nebraska safely. We gave my dad 52 cans to commemorate his 52nd birthday, and Lil' Sis and I each got to keep 22 cans (actually, thanks to the now-infamous "Niagara Falls Incident" one of us only got 21 cans).

Since then, the Moxie has been broken out in the LutheranHusker house for one of two reasons:

• A momentous occasion (the Red Sox winning the World Series, Kiddo's birth, etc.)
• Or if I just have a huge craving for Moxie

Starting with Kiddo's birth, every time I've had a can of Moxie to celebrate something, I've kept the can and have written the event on the can with permanent marker. I've got a little collection on a shelf at work. It may be kind of weird, but it's kind of fun, too. I'll take a picture of it sometime when I think of it and post it.

My 2001 case has lasted me almost 5 years. It has seen me through the ups and downs of life, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

It has served me well.

So the next time I break open a Moxie, it will be from a more recent time.

Vintage 2004, if I remember correctly. My former co-worker's daughter sent a 6-pack from Maine...I think it was in 2004. Maybe 2005.

Either way, the permanent marker is ready.

LH