I didn't come along until 1957 and we lived in Louisiana, but one of the constants of my childhood (and there were not all that many) was the Coke Cola (that's what we always called it, both words, but phonetically it sounded more like ko-kola) in the little glass bottle. It was the ideal serving size. My maternal grandmother and her sister, my mother's Aunt Jenny, both had their fridges crammed full of these. At the festive holidays, everyone got a bottle with their meal. When you went for a visit any time of year, the grown-ups drank Community coffee made in small batches in tiny aluminum coffee pots while the kids were welcome to grab a Coke. Holding your own bottle and sipping it as you pleased without having to share with your sister was pure bliss, and is probably the one thing I most strongly associate with those people in that place at that time.

The glass in returnable bottles was heavy duty and the bottles were washed and refilled hundreds of times until they were too worn to use. When I was a kid we would collect bottles thrown from cars on the roadside, and pocketed the deposit money for candy. I remember getting 2 cents a bottle. Much later, distributors started using cheaper glass that could be thrown in the trash so the deposit system ended and our garbage multiplied.

I remember when Coke bottles (and others too) were returnable for a deposit refund. The base of each bottle had the name of the city in which the bottle was manufactured.