what do you drink?

[Dave Wilton]

> I was in soda country in NYC growing up in the 50's until arriving at
> Rochester as an undergraduate, where I never converted but was
> suddenly surrounded by pop.  We used "soda fountain" or "ice cream
> shop" interchangeably, as I recall (in NYC).  Ice cream sodas were
> ice cream soda, and sodas (e.g. coke) were sodas.  No problem.  We
> probably even referred to ice cream sodas as "sodas" when the context
> made it clear.  ("I'll have a strawberry soda with one scoop each of
> chocolate and butter pecan" or whatever.)  I suppose if we were
> introspective we'd have figured they were both called soda because
> they were both made with soda water, a technical term for what we
> usually called seltzer or vichy.

While I was back visiting the folks in NJ (Point Pleasant) last week, my
sister-in-law ordered "soda water" in a restaurant. The waitress, about 20
years of age and who by her accent and usage of "youse guys" was clearly a
native, was thoroughly confused by this. My sister-in-law explained that she
meant "club soda" and all was fine. 20+ years ago when I was growing up
there, confusion between soda/coke and soda water was far more likely than
soda/coke and ice cream soda. Is "soda water" a fading term or was this
waitress just an anomaly?