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A great find!
When I was young, my family used to camp a lot on vacation using a pull behind camper.
I was about 14 at the time and in Myrtle Beach, S.C. with my family. We had an old Coca-Cola cooler that was made in the 1940's or 1950's that my parents bought way back when and continued to use it as a regular cooler.
My parents did not drink alcohol so we had soda in it and would keep it outside under our trailer. We woke up one morning and the cooler had been stolen.
My parents thought it was a teenage prank and hoped the cooler would be found somewhere in the campground but it was gone for good. The police were contacted who told my parents that whoever took it probably wanted the cooler since it was a collectible and not the soda that was in it (they really had no clue that they had anything more than an old Coca-Cola cooler). I remember they were really upset about the situation and didn't understand why someone would do something so low.
I'm not really into collecting Coca-Cola items but happened to be browsing around and sure enough found what looked like the exact same model cooler we owned but it was in a little nicer condition than ours as best as I remember. I decided to bid on it and won it for about $100.
We visited my mom a couple of weeks ago and I decided to bring the cooler along as a surprise. When I brought it in; she took one look at it and knew immediately that it looked just like the cooler that had been stolen over 20 years ago. I handed my mom the cooler and told her I wanted her to have it. I know she really wouldn't use it any longer but thought it would bring back good memories of some of our camping trips and good memories of my father who died about 15 years ago.
My mom isn't a collector or very sentimental about things like this but she almost broke down in tears. She very vividly remembered the day that the cooler was stolen and how upset she was that someone would take it. She even laughed that the cooler was in even better condition than the one that was stolen since it didn't have a speck of rust on it.
Funny how little things like that can conjure up those kind of memories and emotions.
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