"The Soda Pagoda Tagoda"

 

By Ron Gagliardi

 

A pagoda is a many-tiered tower in India and East Asia.

 

How did a towering, multi-tiered collection of brightly-colored, sugary liquids

end up prominently displayed in an Ace Hardware store in a small, New England

town?

 

I noticed it a few years ago and was moderately surprised at the incongruity of

a couple of hundred inhabitants of the end cap of a grocery a store in the

R.W. Hine Ace Hardware store.  I resolved to ask Pat Bowman, the owner-operator,

why, how and when had this out-of-place, grocery store inhabitant come to be in

his store.  (By the way, the R.W. in R. W. Hine stands for "Raymond Walter" in case

you were wondering.  He founded his hardware store in 1910 at its current, Maple

Avenue location.)

 

Years later, I found myself the co-founder, along with Ron Kochman and Rick

"Reggie" Smith, of an online magazine we titled "Cheshire Today".  Early on, we

resolved to interview Pat and to feature the R. W. Hine "Soda Pagoda" and to display

a photo of it on the cover of our magazine by another of our co-founders, Ron Kochman,

prominent local photographer.

 

Recently, in mid-August, we interviewed Pat and his manager Matt Petuch in his office at

231 Maple Avenue.

 

Firstly, my initial "first" question, the one that had been percolating in my mind for far

too long was, "Pat, whatever possessed you to ever become a soda entrepreneur?"

 

Pat immediately recounted a visit to a trade show some years ago with a few of his staff.

They spied the towering, colorful soda display, were impressed by the "look" of it and

the profit information provided by the company's salesman.  "We arranged for the

purchase, shipment, delivery and set-up of the display later that year, in 2014", Pat

explained.

 

Ron asked the obvious question, "Did customers and staff question your decision?"

 

Pat replied, "Not too much...we actually have a few, novel items for sale here at R.W. Hine's:

Red Bull, Arcadia Publishing local history books and we even feature novelty socks."

 

I asked if they had a way to determine which flavor is the favorite flavor of R.W. Hine

customers. 

 

Pat replied, "Root Beer. and we know it's Root Beer because that is the flavor of soda

that we need to re-stock the most."

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