This is the second installment of our "Open Road" summer series, which looks at unusual spots across the state. Look for it every Tuesday.
GRANITE FALLS -- In the annals of American ingenuity, where the Holy Grail is the efficient delivery of a popular product in its perfect package at the right price, it all came together at least once, in the JLC-144.
The F.L. Jacobs Co. of Indianapolis achieved this confluence of style and purpose sometime in the early 1940s when U.S. factory workers, on break from their labors in support of World War II, needed quick refreshment. What they wanted was a Coca-Cola, in a glass bottle so well chilled that if pressed to the temple it could ease a production-line headache.
The red-and-white, mailbox-shaped JLC-144 delivered, and for just 5 cents a pop.
Today, just the empty, curvaceous steel cabinet of the 144, minus the refrigeration system, the rotating rack that held 12 dozen clinking bottles, and the crown catcher into which the metal caps clanked, can fetch $400.
With its innards tossed, "The 144 made a killer refrigerator for deer meat," says Alan Huffman. "I've bought 'em with the antlers still in 'em."
Huffman hunts antique soft-drink vending machines with all their parts intact, these mechanical marvels that eliminated the need for drugstore soda jerks and made the cold, carbonated concoctions easier to find in some places than plain water.
Huffman has more than 700 vintage machines in a museum at his Antiquities Vending Co. in the Caldwell County town of Granite Falls, just outside Hickory. The collection is both a roadside attraction and a working archive of parts and operating systems for nearly every make and model of soda vending machine produced from 1925 to the late 1970s. Many are thought to be the only complete examples of their kind.
Huffman's main source of income is repairing and restoring vintage machines in a small shop adjacent to the former cotton mill building that houses the museum and a banquet hall he rents for special events.
"I can pretty much put together anything anybody's got," said Huffman, who loves a mechanical challenge.
When he gets a Vendolator that won't vend or a Tyler Champion that won't chill, he can unlock the museum, open the door on his complete version of the identical device and figure out what's wrong. If he can't buy a replacement part, Huffman has a machinist copy one from the museum model.
Sometimes he makes 10 repairs a day.
Nostalgia pays off
This unintended career arc began in 1989 when Huffman was 21 years old, thumbing through a Sharper Image catalog that offered a restored round-top glass-door Cavalier 96 for more than $6,000.
It reminded him of the machine in the old Galaxy Food Store in Granite Falls, where he bought 10-ounce Orange Suncrests for a quarter when he was a barefoot kid. What ever happened to that old machine?
Later, wandering through an antiques mall in Columbia, S.C., he found the model he'd seen in the catalog, but unrestored and just $350.
Smelling a deal, he charged it to his credit card and installed it in his apartment. He found another one, and put that into service in a hair salon. Another shop owner saw it and wanted one, and a business was born.
Huffman still has 120 machines in service, which he stocks with 40 flavors of soft drinks, all in glass bottles. He never, ever deals in cans.
"Glass is a better package," he said.
One of his machines stands against a wall of the oak-floored Granite Hardware store in town, near the galvanized wash tubs and the bug-zappers. Clerk Lisa Arrowood says a fair number of people come in just to buy a cold Cheerwine or Mountain Dew.
"I try to lay off," she says, but succumbs to a Sundrop once in a while.
Go ask Mama
At 43, and stout as a Westinghouse refrigerator cabinet, Huffman drinks only the diet versions. "Co-Cola," is how he pronounces the brand name, in an accent as sweet as grape Nehi.
He has a story for every machine he has: how it was designed, where it was built, where it was found. They turn up in barns, storage buildings, in old businesses whose owners turned out the lights one evening and never came back.
Huffman can restore the most forlorn machines to their former glory, with polished chrome and a professional paint job in Coke red or Pepsi blue.
In more than 20 years of business, he's only had three women buy machines for themselves. But a lot of the men say they have to ask their wives' permission. Huffman offers them his secret weapon, a 1940s-era Coca-Cola logo featuring a little blue-eyed boy that he can reproduce on the machines.
"Go show her that little boy," he says. "It never fails."
Restored, the machines end up in businesses or home game rooms, delivering memories in a bottle.
