Spring Grove Pop: a delicious mystery ~ January 14, 2004

David Heiller

I haven’t quite unraveled the mystery of Spring Grove strawberry pop, and maybe that’s the way it should be. Some things you just have to believe in blindly.

The new owner of Spring Grove Bottling Works, Dawn Hanson, let me watch her and Roger Morken and Jerry Ellingson make some pop last Wednesday.

It was a fun visit, sort of a step back in time, which seems only fitting in the beautiful city of Spring Grove. I sometimes think that time has stopped in Spring Grove, and I mean that as a compliment, although I know it’s not true and that the city has its foibles like the rest of the world.

But watching pop get made at the bottling works really did feel like something from the 1950s. The old reliable machinery, all clicking and rotating and spinning in perfect order, was like something you’d see in a 1950s newsreel. The three workers steadily kept it all going, washing bottles, checking labels, loading boxes.

I couldn’t help but admire it all, that here in 2004, in a city of 1,304 Norwegians, is a bottling plant that has eight different flavors of pop. I tip my hat to Dawn and her husband, Bob, for keeping the tradition going, and to Roger Morken, his son Eric, and the others before them for doing the same.

Spring Grove soda and its many varieties. David and most of the rest of the Heillers only had a taste for one kind: Strawberry.

I don’t mean to sound sentimental, but it’s a big accomplishment, and that goes for anyone that can maintain a small business in this day and age.

Now about that aforementioned mystery: I sometimes ask myself what makes Spring Grove strawberry pop so special. Yes, there are seven other Spring Grove pop flavors. For the record, they are black cherry, orange, root beer, grape, creamy orange, lemon sour and cream soda. I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever drunk one of them. Every time Ι try to buy a different flavor, my hand gets drawn by an unseen force to the strawberry.

It probably goes way back to the days of those funny bottles with the skinny neck and the Spring Grove logo embossed in red and white on the outside. Take a day at the beach, and hot sun, and swimming in the river and not having a care in the world and hanging out with friends. Then throw an ice-cold Spring Grove strawberry pop on top, and you’ve got some serious bonding.

It’s not just me. My siblings have the same thoughts. So do their kids and my kids. When you go visit Grandma, you drink strawberry pop, and you take some home with you too.

And the pop itself. Wow. Take a guzzle and hold on. It might even come shooting out your nose with the force of a blown fire hydrant. There is more fizz in strawberry pop than your average glass of nitroglycerin. Roger Morken told me they put 60 pounds of pressure in it, but I think he turns the gauge up a bit when nobody is look­ing.

It packs a punch, and can lead to some eruptions that send mothers cringing and friends smiling in admiration of what sounds like a cross between a thunderstorm and the roar of a charging lion.

The flavor of strawberry pop? Ah, fresh strawberries, mixed with a liberal dose of pure cane sugar; it’s like blue skies and county fairs and a game of softball all rolled into one. Like Ι said, try to bottle up your childhood, and you’ve got Spring Grove strawberry pop.

OK, I’ll stop there. Enough mere words. Let the mystery be.

I think I’ll go get a bottle of pop, Spring Grove strawberry if you please.