THANKS: If you helped us unravel the notion that June 2007 has a
“blue moon,” our thanks. We had a ton of feedback, and that’s what
Round the Square is all about. You.

COKE PLANT: We’ve also been getting input on whether Bradford’s
Coke plant was just a bottling facility or had once actually made
the bottles themselves.

Tony Falconi writes, “The old Coke bottling plant was located on
Roberts Street, now Jarrett machine shop. Years later, Coke moved
to East Main Street where a car dealer now does business.”

“The bottom of the Coke bottles were embossed with ‘Bradford,
Pa.’ This was not an indication that the bottle was made in
Bradford, as I recall.

“Somewhere along the path of life here in Bradford, I was told
that ‘Bradford’ only indicated what area the bottle belonged to.
When I was a kid we would look at the bottom of the bottle to see
how far away the bottle came from.

“At that time the bottles were not throw-aways so with the town
or city name the bottle would eventually be returned to the
bottling plant it came from, something the same as the glass milk
bottles with dairy plants’ names imprinted on them.

“Then the bottles would be returned to the rightful owners.

“In 81 years I cannot remember a bottle plant in Bradford except
the plastic bottle now made at Graham containers in Bradford,” Tony
concludes.

POPCORN MAN: On another question from a reader we hear from Jack
Lucco about that “popcorn man.”

Jack tells us that when he was working for the Onofrio estate,
in the late 1950s or early 1960s, the popcorn man rented an
apartment on the third floor of the Onofrio block. He kept his
popcorn machine in the garage in the back.

The popcorn man would start his “route” at about 11 o’clock and
would go down all the streets ringing a bell. “He had a regular
machine he made the popcorn in … it was on wheels,” Jack tells
us.

TODAY’S QUOTE: “Put down that I was a newspaperman,” said James
McClatchy, 1920-2006, former publisher, The McClatchy Co. (With the
increasing popularity of the Internet, will future generations know
what a news “paper” is?)