Although no soda bottling plants remain, Carbon County had many only a generation ago.
This is the fifth part of a series on the soft drink “pop” industry in Carbon County.
Part 5: A Family with Moxie
Subhead: An inveterate Moxie collector, former Lehighton School principal Gordon Ripkey was related to major Lehighton bottlers.
Ripkey’s earliest recollection was the family being together at the Moxie house. It was in the early 1940s and he was about five years old. He remembers the Bennett sisters playing cards. “We were given Moxie,” said Ripkey. “It went good with potato chips.”
From then on, every member of his family kept Moxie in the house. “When I went to my grandmother’s, we served Moxie. At our house, we had Moxie. When I went to my aunt Helen’s, we had Moxie,” he said. “I grew up on Moxie.”
“Most people say it tastes like medicine. It’s very bitter. The old Moxie was probably more bitter than what it is today.”
Now Ripkey’s breaking his grandson, Alex Ripkey, in on Moxie. “He had his first taste at the age of three,” he said. “It was really like medicine. It was Yuk.”
Although he visited the Moxie house often, Ripkey rarely visited the bottling plant—except as a shortcut to the house. “In the back of the house, in the right hand corner, were steps leading down to the bottling plant,” he recalls. “There was a big vat where they would dump in the Moxie syrup.”
As far as Ripkey knows, Lehighton Moxie Bottling never received a license to bottle Moxie—possibly making them the only bottler on the East coast to bottle Moxie without a license. This was quite a deal—considering that Moxie was the largest selling soft drink in the U.S. at the turn of the last century. The Moxie franchise was quite valuable and the Moxie legal staff was kept continuously busy suing competitor’s knockoffs that tried to profit from Moxie’s marketing success.
Although they reportedly never had a franchise agreement, Moxie frequently sent “big wigs” to Justin Dunbar’s Moxie Bottling. Ripkey remembers seeing them play cards with Justin, who he called, uncle Dut. A friend of Justins, familiar with the Moxie relationship, Orville Purdy, was once asked—why the Moxie Company never took action against the of Lehighton Moxie Bottling Company for using the copyrighted Moxie name? “It may have been because this Lehighton outfit wasn’t imitating Moxie; it was bottling the real stuff,” he is reportedly answered.
After uncle Dut passed away, his wife Helen Dunbar operates the bottling plant for a short time before selling it. The basement was taken over by the Herman family and may have been used to process horseradish. The bottles and memorabilia were purchased by Dale Ott. Ott owned Otts Beverage located in the former Penn Lace Mill on Bridge Street. Ott passed away in his fifties after operating the distributorship for about ten years.
Carbon Bottling Works, the third bottling plant in the Ripkey family belonged to Gordon Ripkey’s father’s brother, Howard Ripkey. Carbon Bottling Works dates back to the turn of the last century when Phaon Shoemaker bottled soft drinks on Birch Alley between Mahoning and Iron Streets, and between 8th and 9th Streets.
In 1927, Curtis Hornberger of Bowmanstown purchased the soft drink bottling and beer distribution operation. In the early 1950s, he sold the property to Howard Ripkey. After Carbon Bottling closed around 1970, Howard Ripkey’s widow, Geraldine Ripkey, continued for a few more years. The property was converted into a private home. The Terry McCullion family currently resides there.
Thanks to Mike Ebbert for historical background.
