In the 1980s, my grandparents cleaned out a small corner convenience store in rural West Virginia, where they found a rundown Coca-Cola cooler. My grandfather loved to collect antiques, so it came home and collected dust in their garage for years.  In 2007, shortly after my parents got married, they brought the cooler to North Carolina to restore it.  The cooler ended up moving everywhere with them: to Ohio, to New York, where my sister and I were born, to Kentucky, and finally back to North Carolina. This cooler has been a staple throughout my entire childhood, whether I was grabbing juice boxes at age 4, Sunny D's at age 7, and then sodas and Gatorades throughout my early teens. My favorite memory surrounding the cooler is every time my grandad would come over when I was younger; he would say, “You know, when I was in school, we would go down the street during our lunch break and grab a bag of chips, a candy bar, and Coke out of a cooler similar to that one for $0.25. Even now, he still tells that story to my sister and me. That story reminds me of how Coca-Cola is considered the drink of America and its hard-working people. Coca-Cola also has a campaign called “Share a Coke” where people from everywhere can connect through the drink. These two stories that the brand tells come together to create a motto very similar to the American dream. America is a place where anyone from anywhere can come and work hard to create a life for themselves and a community to support them. 

– CB

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