Thank you David for this story!

“Marge, this root beer is flat!”

That was what my dad said at lunch one day when my mom brought him some root beer from her stash that was “hidden” behind their bed. Their bedroom was strictly off limits and we were threatened if we stole food from there. Mom kept lots of pop, chips and other tasty treats behind their bed and gave us the worst kind of threatenings if we ventured in to steal any. That was because we were such food thieves. We smelled out all baked goods hidden anywhere in the house and ate them. We seemed to be able to find the freezer key, no matter where she hid it. (Her favorite place was in the hollow part on the bottom of aerosol cans). Spanking and yelling at us did not stop us from stealing food; we just got sneakier about it. That’s what happened with the root beer.

Me and another brother or brothers (I can’t remember who all was involved with me) snuck into our parents’ room and carefully opened a large bottle of root beer. It was a Cragmont brand which was probably a store brand. We drank it all. Then we put water and the right amount of brown food color and did our best to seal it shut.

Some weeks later, at lunch, my father asked mom for some pop to go with his lunch. He did that occasionally, especially during the summers when it was very hot outside. When we saw that he was about to drink our altered root beer we made ourselves scarce, but stayed close enough to hear his reaction. After, he told mom how flat the root beer was, she made some comment about it being old. We kept quiet till we were out of hearing range and then had a good laugh.