School Project- Useless Items with sentimental/neat value

The Odd and Useless

By Madison Nef

The odd and useless items I am going to write about are the root beer bottles in my collection. Being I can’t pick JUST one bottle (as the paper would be too short), I am going to write about each bottle I have- so basically a collection of mini stories.

The Fort at #4 - This bottle is the oldest one I have so far and actually is the one that started my collection. I had gone on a homeschooling “field trip” of sorts with my family to an old colonial fort. It’s closed now except for special occasions... but in any case, Dad was thirsty and bought it from the gift shop. 4 years later, he gave it to me as a keepsake and I decided that it was cool to collect them.

Nardelli’s - Nardelli’s was opened in 1922 and has taken the name of New England’s best grinder (basically a sandwich) and also the name of Connecticut’s oldest sandwich shop. I acquired this bottle on a trip back from NJ. My Dad had been dying to try one of the famous sandwiches after being enticed by a very deceiving bulletin board. I’m not much of a sandwich person, so I’d say the root beer was the best part of the meal- but even Dad was disappointed with the sandwich.

Regina Pizzeria - Regina Pizzeria is a very small but good pizza place on the way to one of my family’s favorite malls. I got this root beer bottle the first time we visited. The root beer was alright, not my favorite. However, the pizza made up for it in all aspects- it was a thin crust with lots of cheese and that type of pizza sauce that is overly salty. PERFECTION- and I got to add to my collection.

Bagel Mill - Bagel Mill is a small bagel shop in Peterborough NH. It has TONS of different types of fresh bagels and is famous locally for it’s maple cream cheese. It is rare that we go into it, and on my 3rd or 4th trip I decided to try a root beer (I had never noticed that they had glass bottles before). It was overly cold, but was good to wash down the stale cinnamon bun that I had.

Al Dente - This is the last bottle that actually has a good story behind it. I acquired this bottle at a small Italian restaurant in Massachusetts. The story behind it is that no one could agree on anything good to eat- no one wanted crappy McDonald’s and we found that Denny’s was overpriced, so we asked a mall clerk. She recommended the tiny place behind the mall. I would NEVER recommend it to anyone- it was terrible. I left hungry and highly dissapointed. Even the root beer didn’t satisfy me- and it’s my favorite drink!

The rest of the bottles have been found miscellaneously. The WORST root beer I have ever had was bought at Market Basket- it was Virgil’s Root beer. At the time my dad had been on his diet, so I got the diet root beer that had been sweetened with Stevia. Two words: NEVER. AGAIN. It was sickly sweet and actually made me feel like throwing up. YUCK! The others are Stewart’s (my personal favorite) and IBC.