Placard #47 — Fizzstone Phosphate-Lime (1957–1963)
I have been putting this one off for almost a year now because I wanted to do it right. Fizzstone deserves a careful placard, not a sloppy one, and the closure mechanism alone took me three Saturdays to draw properly. I am sorry the figure didn't make it into this post — my scanner has been declining the larger sheet sizes ever since I updated the driver, and I have not yet talked Ronald into bringing his over. The drawing is on the dining table under a brass paperweight shaped like a frog. I will add it as soon as I can. For now the words will have to do most of the work.
Here is the placard, as I would write it if the bottle ever made it into a real museum, which it should.
Fizzstone Phosphate-Lime
Fizzstone was a phosphate-lime carbonate produced for six and a half years by the Wickham-Crane bottling concern, a small family operation that had previously bottled cream soda for the Shelton-area lumber camps. It was advertised as "the only soda filtered through actual living stone" — a reference to the company's use of cold spring water that passed naturally through several feet of sandstone before reaching the cistern. The water was, in fact, very good. The phosphate was sharp without being unpleasant. The lime was real lime.
What made Fizzstone notable was not the recipe but the bottle. The Wickham-Crane closure — patented in 1956 by Dorothea Wickham, who had been a mechanical draftsman before her marriage — was a brass snap-knuckle latch operated by squeezing two opposing levers on the bottle neck. Pressed correctly, the cap released with a small audible click and a satisfying puff of carbonation. Pressed incorrectly, the latch tended to spring backward into the meat of the thumb.
Fizzstone was discontinued in the spring of 1963 not because anyone tired of the soda but because the bottling line could not keep replacement stock boys. The closure injured one or more workers per week. A simpler crown cap was considered, but Dorothea reportedly refused; the snap-knuckle was the soda, in her view, and a Fizzstone without it would be only phosphate water. The plant closed quietly that May. Roughly six thousand bottles are believed to survive, most still in the Mason County area, kept by people who knew somebody who knew somebody.
"It should foam to the second knurl. If it foams past the second knurl, the seal has gone soft and the bottle is no longer trustworthy. If it foams only to the first, you have an inferior pour and may try again." — D. Wickham, packaging instruction sheet, 1959
- Carbonation
- 42 PSI at bottling (high, by 1958 standards)
- Sugar
- 11.2 g per 6.5 fl oz serving
- Bottle
- Pale green glass, 6.5 fl oz, conical neck, embossed "WC" oval
- Closure
- Brass snap-knuckle, two-lever, US Pat. 2,791,448
- Retail price
- 9¢ (1957) → 12¢ (1962)
- Donated by
- The estate of H. Boon (the placardist's father)
I have one unopened bottle remaining. I do not intend to open it. I tried to drink one in 1998 and was, as my father would have said, "instructed by the closure," and I think a man my age has been instructed enough.
Below is a small simulation of the foam-knurl gauge Dorothea referenced. Turn the knob until the gauge reads "second knurl" if you would like to know what a correct Fizzstone pour looked like, in the abstract. The knob does not actually foam anything. Some things are simulations and there is no shame in that.
If you have a Fizzstone bottle in any condition — even one with a missing or partially-fired closure — please write to me. I am compiling a survival census and would like to include yours. My e-mail is in the sidebar under "contact."
— Marvin
i can bring the scanner thursday after lunch. cant promise it'll do legal but it might
My uncle Tom worked the Wickham line in '61 and lost most of the nail on his left thumb. He always said it was worth it. Lovely write-up, Marvin.
have a green WC oval, gasket gone but tongue intact. trade for the Pinkham cough pastilles tin?