Although no soda bottling plants remain, Carbon County had many only a generation ago.

 This is the first part of a five-part series on the soft drink “pop” industry in Carbon County.

Only a generation ago, soda pop brands like Lewie’s. Palm, Whistle, Moxie, and Coca Cola, to name a few, were bottled in Carbon County.

Most of the soda bottling plants were in Lehighton, although the largest was located in Palmerton. Before closing in the 1970s, it was exclusively a Coca Cola bottler. But that was only in its last days.

The bottling operation in Palmerton began life on July 8, 1912 as the Palmerton Bottling Works at the rear of 321-323 Lehigh Ave. Joseph Tachovsky, the owner of the Waldorf Hotel at 180 Delaware Avenue started the business to provide soft drinks for his hotel. He hired Frank Vlossal as manager.

 Tachovsky married Frank Vlossal’s sister Fannie and helped bring her mother and nine remaining sisters and brothers to the U.S. from Austria-Hungry. The family moved to 450 Delaware Ave and the bottling plant moved with them.

 In 1918, Frank Vlossal became owner of the business and took on his brother Charles as a partner. Initially, all bottling operations were done manually. By 1923, with the installation of an automatic bottle sterilizer, filler, and crown-capping machine, they produced 350 cases per day of Palm beverages. Seven men and three trucks were employed to produce and deliver the sodas to a distribution area that covered from Easton to Wilkes-Barre.

Palm sodas were produced in a variety of flavors that included: ginger ale, orange, root beer, and sarsaparilla. In 1925, Palmerton Bottling Works acquired a Coca Cola franchise and changed its name to the Palmerton Coca Cola Bottling Company.

The new company incorporated in 1937, built a Frackville warehouse in 1940, and in 1941, constructed a bottling plant in Washington New Jersey. After WWII ended, Frank bought a Seven-up franchise in New Jersey. He sold it to his brother Charles in exchange for his shares in Palmerton Coca Cola.

Donny Kresge, now 83 years old, started working at Palmerton Coca Cola Bottling Company in 1958. He was laid off from his job as an electrician at the New Jersey Zinc Company and took the job with his wife’s uncle, Frank Vlassak.

Kresge started as a laborer where he loaded empties onto the washer, unloaded cases from the filling machine and stacked the cases onto the towmotor. He worked his way up to become a mechanic and eventually became responsible for maintenance of the company’s vending machines—taking care of well over a thousand machines in five counties. All the vending machines were supplied free to stores and gas stations by Coca Cola with the condition that only Coke products could be sold.

At one time, Coke was a minor part of the business. On a truckload of 20 cases, only three or four would be Coke. The rest would be Palm sodas.

But during WWII, the availability of Coke to GIs, Coke’s expanded advertising, and a restricted sugar supply, prompted Palmerton to discontinue bottling Palm and only bottle Coke products.

In 1970, at a time when Palmerton Coca Cola was selling 1.75 million cases a year, it was sold to New York Coca Cola, and later, sold to Keystone Coca-Cola of Pittston. The Palmerton operations were closed and Kresge was let go around 1985. The building, across the street from the Palmerton Municipal Building is now Vic’s Time Company.