Dr. Thunder Probably Went to Med School in the Caribbean

Never mind what they say about the autumnal equinox. Today was the first day of fall here in northeast Illinois. The air was a little chilly and wind blew puffy clouds around much of the day. I saw three separate irregular V formations of geese fly over during a ten-minute walk. Leaves are coloring up and falling down, though tired green is still in the majority. That will not be true in two weeks. The grass is still green, and I mowed some of it today, but with any luck that will be the last mowing of '08.

(Partial) product endorsement: Dr. Thunder. Strange as it sounds, this Dr. Pepper imitation created by Wal-Mart isn't bad. For 68¢ for two liters (actually diet Dr. Thunder) at the behemoth retailer, not bad at all. It isn't Dr. Pepper, of course, but what could be? Other members of my family drink Dr. Pepper much more than I do, but I appreciate its uniqueness in the wide realm of colas.

I like the name. Dr. Thunder sounds like the supervillain in some future, and really bad, sequel in the Spiderman movie series. It's better-named than Mr. Pibb, that Coca-Cola Co. imitation of Dr. Pepper created in the early 1970s, which sounds like the name of a junior high principal.

One more note about old sodas: This is wrong, at least in one particular. Like brand cola wasn't introduced in 1982. Maybe it was re-introduced that year, but I remember Like from ca. 1970. At school once, we were assigned to come up with sentences using "I like," and one boy (not me) came up with "I like Like."

That sentence mystified the teacher, who wasn't familiar with the drink. But the kids knew about it. No doubt we were more attuned to soft drinks and soft-drink commercials than she was, and we persuaded her that the sentence actually made sense. So Like does not date from the early '80s, as minor a point as that might be. I probably have a Like bottle cap at my mother's house even now, from the time when I collected bottle caps with enthusiasm, which was in grade school.