Lee Rudolph wrote:
> I'm a few years older than you, and though I now live in
> southeastern Massachusetts, when I was a teenager in Cleveland
> a standard item was a so-called "Boston cooler". As far as
> I could ever tell, it was the same as what you're calling
> (and what I would probably now call) a "float". Tom, et al.--
> was the "Boston cooler" isogloss a tight little band around
> Cleveland, or do others know this name? (Does it still exist?
> Was/is it different from a "float" in some way?)
>
> Lee Rudolph

That sure didn't ring even a faint bell! I had to do a
search, and while I don't like relying on Wikipedia, I don't
have much time right now, and the article there seemed
somewhat interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_cooler

and another article, which I had even less time to examine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_beer_float

Last night I ran across another Black Cow, this one in a dated
(1931) booklet put out by Pet Milk, which combined root beer
and their evaporated milk. The Hires booklet was older though....

--
Jean B.