Jenn Ridley > writes:

(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".
>
>I grew up in the Detroit area, and a "boston cooler" was a float made
>with Vernor's Ginger Ale (and stroh's ice cream). (OK, when -I- was
>growing up, it was something that parents remembered from their youth.
>Although, IIRC, there were still a few places where you could order a
>Black Cow or a Boston Cooler and not have the staff look at you
>oddly.)

Definitely Vernor's Ginger Ale. I don't remember Stroh's ice cream,
or any other brand (except for Producer's Dairy, which may or may
not at the time I am speaking of still have had many really local
"producers", but which definitely did have at least one horse-drawn
milk cart as of 1956 or so, covering a route on the West Side that
went from at least the dairy on State Road--or was it Pearl Road?--
north to Krather Ave., uphill from the Cleveland Zoo; not that
the milk cart delivered ice cream, I'm merely rambling).

Since I've opened the "foodstuffs with exotic names" can of worms,
who knows what about the distribution of the phrase "California
cheeseburger" (i.e., cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato), which
I *think* was current in Cleveland c. 1965, and was certainly
current in New Jersey c. 1966? How far West, and how early, was
the phrase current? Surely it no longer is used anywhere; when
did it die out? Do Detroit parents wax nostalgic about them?

Lee Rudolph