William Oliver Baketel Little
I didn’t know my paternal grandfather well – not after I was three years old and my parents and I moved to the West Coast leaving my Nana and Bumpa in Boston. It’s hard to really ‘know’ someone when you live 3,000 miles apart. But what I do know of him makes me puff right up with pride.
Bumpa was a “Skilled Pharmacist” and was registered as such by the State of New Hampshire Commission of Pharmacy and Practical Chemistry on July 26, 1909. We have his framed certificate hanging in the upstairs hall. As I recall, he went to Dartmouth to get his degree. All that being said, however, is not what makes me proud. It is that stalwart part of his character that made him say “no” to a lucrative job offer by Coca Cola.
Bumpa’s Pharmacist License
He didn’t like it that part of their formula involved cocaine. Despite the fact that there was nothing illegal about that or other ingredients – after all, many patent medicines were also fortified with morphine, opium or cocaine — Bumpa did not think it was a proper component of the ‘refreshing drink’ that Coca Cola promised would “relieve the fatigue that comes from over-play, over-work and over-thinking” according to a 1907 advertisement.
Instead, Bumpa opened his own business making various kinds of extracts that were used by manufacturers of syrups etc. I remember that he always sent my mother a few bottles of vanilla extract early in November for her “holiday baking needs.”
‘Registered March 1885″
Bumpa has crossed my mind more than once these past few weeks as I fine-tune the manuscript for my upcoming book “Jailhouse Stories from the Jumping-Off Place.” The next-to-last chapter has to do with law and order here in Pacific County during the time of prohibition. Mostly it’s about rum-runners and stills located in the coves and sloughs around the bay, but there’s a bit about snake oil salesmen and medicine shows and what the corner drugstores were selling out of their back rooms, too.
It’s makes for fascinating reading (or at least I think so!) but I’m still glad that Bumpa “just said no.” And I can’t help wondering what he’d think of Coca Cola’s heavy-handed use of sugar these days…
One Seaview resident and grandfather of a friend was highly addicted to Coke back in the day. Glad your Grandpa said, no!