It happened at my favorite Kroger’s while I was looking for the Dr Pepper made with pure cane sugar. 

I guess I need to explain.

As I head towards old age, I’ve become more “aware” of my health. I’m becoming what I used to criticize when I was much younger and much, much smarter. I have become my uncles and aunts and their friends when they were my age – talking about my health and what I do and don’t do for it.

So what does that have to do with Dr Pepper and Kool-Aid?

Well, Kool-Aid is made with sugar – pure cane sugar, and, like you, I’ve been reading all about the controversy about high fructose corn syrup. Does corn syrup really make us fatter and is it really unhealthy? I don’t really know about the health part – but, in my mind, soda with real sugar just tastes better.

So, there I was at Kroger looking for the Dr Pepper with pure cane sugar. Couldn’t find it anywhere, but I did find the Kool-Aid display and that little light bulb went off in my head: You add pure cane sugar to Kool-Aid. Hmmmmmmmmm.

That very day, I bought my first package of Kool-Aid in, gee, 10 or 15 years – and I’m never going back.

Kool-Aid was a part of every family event. Grandma used to whip up gallons of the stuff in a huge container that never, ever seemed to go dry. Mom and her sisters would bring more gallons to the family picnics – every family had a different flavor.

I didn’t appreciate it, though. I envied the families who brought in the glass bottles of soda.  Those families had to be rich because back then, soda (in Nebraska, we called it pop) cost 10- to 12-cents a bottle. That was a pretty hefty price tag for a kid growing up in the ‘50s. We didn’t have much variety, either. In my small hometown, you drank Pepsi or Dr Pepper. Kool-Aid had six different flavors!

Once I went to college and became sophisticated, I switched to the bottled stuff and it took a kidney stone, middle-aged spread and all that talk about what they put in soda for me to rediscover my roots.

We’ve always been a Kool-Aid family.

Now there are lots of jokes about “…drinking the Kool-Aid…” It all started when Jim Jones, the leader of a religious group in California moved his group to South America and eventually ordered his followers to commit suicide by drinking Kool-Aid.

That happened 30 years ago, though, and Kool-Aid is back in vogue – at least at our house.

And it’s a great way for me to keep in touch with my Nebraska roots because…guess what? Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska in 1927 by a guy named Edwin Perkins. The City of Hastings is so proud of that fact that they have organized “Nebraska’s Official Soft Drink Heritage Foundation” and the City now hosts Kool-Aid Days, a three-day festival of concerts, contests, picnics, and, well, Kool-Aid.

I guess it takes an economic downturn, when money is tight and we’re all a little nervous about the future, for us to prioritize how we spending our paychecks. On the other hand, what a great time for each of us once again to realize what’s really important in life – doing things that don’t cost a lot of money: Meeting new people, taking up a hobby, volunteering for an organization that needs your help or maybe enjoying the simple pleasure of making a pitcher of Kool-Aid for the family.

It’s all a matter of getting back to our roots and being thankful for what we have.

So, being true to my native Nebraska roots and conscious of my love for Texas, I proudly drink my Kool-Aid every day, laced with pure cane sugar from Sugar Land, Texas.

Do you have questions or comments? E-mail tom at tbroad@ourtribune.com.