Badges

In the classic 1948 motion picture “The Treasure of Sierra Madre,” the gold prospectors are confronted by a gang of Mexican banditos who claim to be the federales.  What follows is one of the all-time snippets of film dialogue.  

Prospector: “If you are the police, where are your badges?”

Bandito: “Badges?  We ain’t got no badges.  We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”

It is amusing to remember that there was a time in American culture when you really wanted to show your badges.  For a while in the 50’s it seemed like all the junior high kids were collecting and wearing a certain kind of homemade badge; and you found the raw materials whenever you popped open a Pepsi, an RC, or an Orange Crush.  Before screw-top plastic bottles or pop-top cans, a soft drink came in a glass bottle with a little metal cap, crimped around the edge. 

Inside each cap there was a flat piece of cork that formed the seal.  To make a badge, you carefully removed the cork.  Then you slid the little circle of cork inside your t-shirt and pressed it back into the metal cap, which was on the outside of the shirt.  If you did it just right, the cork and the cap locked together to create a shiny one-inch badge, and you became a walking endorsement for your favorite soda.  We were the original influencers. 

Some kids wore just one badge, while others sported three or four; and there was a brisk business in bottle cap trading.  Some kids had badges of different sodas, creating a rainbow effect, while others collected only the bottle caps of their favorite drink.  This one fanatic named Tony had about twenty Dr. Pepper badges spread across the front of his shirt.

This crazy fad was practiced by boys and girls alike, and in fact there was a group of girls who carried it a bit too far.  Each of the girls wore exactly two badges right over … well, you know where.  They drew a lot of attention, and they got busted for dress code violation. 

When it was time to launder your shirt, you stretched and pulled the material, and the badges would pop off.  The good news was, you could re-apply a badge several times, until the cork wore out.  When that happened, you had to buy more soda; and many parents got tired of buying soda by the case just to feed the frenzy.  If only there was another source of bottle caps!      

Once my father and I were on a road trip and we made a pit stop in Bonsall, California, a northern San Diego County wide spot in the road that you will not find on any map.  We pulled into a hot, dusty general store and café that featured a horseshoe shaped lunch counter with about a dozen stools upholstered in torn plastic. 

By the checkout was a big red cooler.  Each day they loaded it up with bottles of pop and smothered them with crushed ice.  As the ice melted, the water was so cold that the proprietor could barely keep his hand in it long enough to pull out a Coke, or a Nehi, or a Cream Soda, or whatever you wanted.  He ran his hand down over the bottle to wipe off as much water as possible.  It was a stifling summer day and it felt fantastic to press that frigid bottle against my forehead. 

Next to the cooler was a bottle opener attached to the wall.  Dad and I popped open our drinks, and the bottle caps fell into the trash can below.  I looked down and … EUREKA!  There must have been 200 bottle caps.  How was this possible?  Obviously, the junior high students in Bonsall had not caught up to the bottle-cap badge phenomenon.

The guy was happy to get rid of them, and after we got home, I was a badge hero and largely cornered the market.  However, my entrepreneurship was short-lived.  The bottle-cap mania ran out before the bottle caps did, leaving me with a bucketful of reminders of a craze come and gone.       

This flashback was prompted when my five-year-old grandson and I were watching “UP” by Pixar.  An important plot point is introduced in the first five minutes of the film.  Do you remember it?  It is when this shy little boy named Carl meets Ellie, the outrageous tomboy.  She removes from her own shirt a purple bottle-cap badge with a cluster of grapes and the words “GRAPE SODA.”  She pins the badge onto his shirt, welcoming him into her adventure club, kicking off their life together; and Carl never removed the badge.

Until the end of the movie!

By then he was an old man, and he had worn that badge all his life in memory of Ellie.  He took it off his lapel and ceremoniously pinned it on Russell, the young scout who shared with Carl the great adventures of the film.           

What fun to see that a silly, short-term, long-ago tweener obsession about bottle caps had become immortalized in another classic film about badges!