By Ted Kooser

Perhaps the last two or three of the type I remember—
a tank for the water and ice, and a labyrinthine
steel rack to hold the necks of the bottles, a cold flap
that a nickel would unlock so you could pull out a bottle—
haven’t been placed on prominent display in one of those
sadly under-funded, just-off-the-highway, Butler-tin
county museums, but, on their broken-down casters
have been shoved and scraped over the floor to the back
to be stored with a surplus of other heartfelt donations,
none really rare, and none of much historical interest—
the one-hill-at-a-time hand-operated corn planters,
grease-stained lard presses and treadle sewing machines—
the pop coolers’ heavy lids closed over stale summer air
from the late Forties, their bottle openers still functional,
cap receptacles hanging below, though containing no
pop caps—no Oh-So Grape, Nehi Orange, Cream Soda—
all of those caps pitched up onto the top of the bluff
that casts a cool shadow over the Standard Oil station
owned by my Grandfather Moser, who as a young man
played ball for the township team, who is still throwing
those bottle caps, one after another, from the oil-spotted
cracked pavement in front of the station, showing off,
showing his grandchildren his pitching arm, winding up,
lifting a knee, then sailing a cap high into a lost world,
partially sealed by the dried rubber strips in the cooler.

---

Ted Kooser is a former United States Poet Laureate, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and lives with his wife in eastern Nebraska. He writes for a few hours every morning and writes pretty well about once every two weeks.