An Orange Roof

I'm sure I've referenced the Discontinued Foods! BlueSky account at least a few times in the past. Today they reposted this:

Howard Johnson's Soda (1968-circa 1977): The iconic hotel/restaurant chain made several forays into selling their foods and beverages commercially, including this line of canned sodas. Flavors included Cola, Grape, Orange, Cream Soda, Ginger Ale, Root Beer, and more

I like the design of the cans well enough as a midcentury modern look, but the thing they reminded me of is my child nostalgia for the Howard Johnson's orange roof.

My rural family of six did not travel except to see relatives, and even then we generally only went a few hours away and stayed overnight with the relatives. We almost never "went out to dinner," either, until I was well into my teen years.

But I remember the orange Howard Johnson's roof from the small city where both sets of my grandparents lived. I have no idea where it was located, since it has been gone for a long time. When I first saw it, it gave a siren call of cosmopolitanism and modernity I could never have. 

I can't explain the feeling the image of that roof evokes in my. It's something about the shininess of childhood innocence, seeing something unusual for the first time (an orange roof!) when you have extremely limited experience, that's hard to ever replicate with other experiences as you get older. 

I saw other HoJo's over the years, later, degraded and sad. But these cans brought back the 1960s moment for just a second.