Getting the flavor of...The granddaddy of American pop

The granddaddy of American pop

Halfway between Dallas and Austin is a museum dedicated to the nation’s “oldest major soft drink,” said Jay Jones in the Los Angeles Times. Created by a pharmacist in 1885—a year before Coca-Cola debuted—the soda pop was initially named after its hometown: In a handful of places “Shoot me a Waco!” is still understood as a command to bring out a glass of Dr Pepper. The beverage’s drugstore birthplace is long gone, but “a life-size animatronic re-creation of its pharmacist” greets visitors who venture into Waco’s Dr Pepper Museum (drpeppermuseum.com). Housed in a former bottling plant, the three-story brick museum exhibits “tens of thousands” of soft-drink artifacts, including delivery trucks, bottling machines, and plenty of memorabilia that’s not Dr Pepper–related. Was it the recipe or the name that doomed Kickapoo Joy Juice to relative obscurity? As an unabashed “tribute to good ol’ capitalism,” this museum might be the best place to find an answer.

Cooperstown’s baseball cathedral

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It helps to be in a “hokey mood” when you visit the Baseball Hall of Fame, said Steven V. Roberts in The Washington Post. The sports shrine in Cooperstown, N.Y. (baseballhall.org) treats the national pastime with dignity, but it’s more fun if you’re game to sing along with a recording of the late broadcaster Harry Caray as he joyously mangles “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” And especially if you’re in the mood to swap baseball stories with other fans. “The museum is really about stories, not objects,” and I learned something new about the game “every few feet.” In a section dedicated to the origins of baseball, the curators now freely admit that baseball existed long before Abner Doubleday put together a game in a local cow pasture back in 1839. Since history shows that “souvenir hawkers and concessionaires crowded 19th-century parks,” the tourist shops surrounding the building feel less like an affront than “part of baseball lore.”