PS:

The Coca-Cola Company, headquartered in Atlanta, GA, is, to the best of my knowledge, largely owned by the various Kenan Family of Charitable Trusts (many not Kenan-named) -- even the Charlotte-based delivery-truck drivers tell me that the company is "Kenan-owned." Coca-Cola is the most recognized trademark in the world (although Apple has now passed it in value).

>>>: Fashions change -- do you???

Coke never does. (LOL!!! You don't believe THAT one, do you???)

OK, I'm in the mood to tell secrets -- a few from Coca-Cola, and one Kenan Family secret (the big one), and hope Tommy doesn't KILL me!!!

1. Coca-Cola tastes less sweet than Pepsi-Cola -- although it has more sweeter -- because colas are very complex flavors and Coke's predominant flavor is lime (also why it's so popular in Latin America you can hardly even FIND a Pepsi), while Pepsi's is vanilla.

2. This one told to me by Roberto Goizueta, the Cuban exile who rose to become CEO of Coca-Cola and is credited with invigorating Coca-Cola with a global vision. I met him by chance in an Atlanta restaurant in the late 1980s, and here is what he told me: "Coke is formulated to be poured from the bottle at room temperature over pea (correct spelling) ice."

"Pea ice" is rarely found today. It is ice made in an extrusion process that produces a rod of not-totally-solid ice that falls off in pieces as it is extruded, roughly the size of chick peas. Years ago, this was the least expensive and most common form of ice produced commercially on-the-premises for drinks.

3. This is the one you've been waiting for: Originally, Coca-Cola included AN EXTRACT of the coca leaf -- but NEVER ACTUAL COCAINE (a substance refined from the leaf). This was in fact an "invigorating" ingredient -- what the "Indians" in the high Andes chewed the coca leaves to gain benefit of. Later, it was removed and replaced with caffeine.

The Coca-Cola Company has a love/hate relationship with the cocaine-in-Coke rumors, wanting to dispel them -- but loving the mystery and PR value of their constant swirling -- especially among young people. That's why they deny them, but don't tell the whole truth -- normally.

Although I deduced this was probably the case several years ago, about six months ago, I found it in an actual Coca-Cola company release.

>>> NOW TO THE KENAN FAMILY SECRET (also involving cocaine):

>>> WHOA!!! I was just signed out of this blog without my doing it -- perhaps THE UNIVERSE is pissed. Really, I kid you not!!!

When Mary Lily Kenan was an undergraduate of Peace Institute in Raleigh, she had a "sexual daliance" with Robert Worth Bingham. Kenans are all sexual libertarians: heterosexuals, homosexuals, bi-sexuals -- even quatro-sexuals (do anything for a quarter -- although Kenans NEVER have sex with animals without first getting their written permission). She contracted syphilis, for which there was no cure in those days.

Her family got her the best medical help, but also realized she was "spoiled" for regular marriage, so to speak. At the age of twenty-three, she met the then-married Henry Flagler, who was also quite smitten (business-wise) with her brother Will (William R. Kenan, JUNIOR), whom he eventually made chief of his Florida development activities -- parallel to what he had made John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil, which Flagler had founded and actually controlled 2/3 of.

After eleven years (and at the convenient ripe old age of 71 for Mr. Flagler), they married (soon after Flagler ram-rodded a bill through the Florida legislature allowing divorce of an incurably insane spouse -- which his second wife ACTUALLY then was). The Flaglers, probably to help dispel ugly rumors and just to give the world the finger as well, ALWAYS shared the same bed and bedroom in an age when wedded couples in "American Aristocracy" ALWAYS had separate bedrooms.

After Flagler's death in 1913, and the NEW YORK TIMES declared her "the wealthiest woman in the world," Mary Lily's health began to decline as the syphilis (which had never tormented her too severely before) roared back in its tertiary phase, and she slowly retreated from society.

She married her old beau, Robert Worth Bingham, who taking advantage of her cocaine and laudanum addictions (taken for the extreme pain of the tertiary syphilis), got her to sign a codicil to her will (which granted all her estate to her own blood family), giving him $5,000,000.00 -- a tiny drop in her bucket, even in those days. Within less than a year of her second marriage, Mary Lily died under MOST MYSTERIOUS circumstances -- a VERY sore point all these years for the ENTIRE (excepting my parents) Kenan Family.

Mr. Bingham went on to use the money to start a publishing empire (later broken-up by FORCE in a serious SNIT by his granddaughter, Sallie Bingham, over how Bob had treated her step-grandmother), centered around THE LOUISVILLE COURIER JOURNAL, my parents FAVORITE newspaper, which they prattled on ALL THE TIME about after we moved to West Chester, PA from Louisville, KY.

In 1989, after the best-selling books about Henry Flagler and Robert Worth Bingham (actually about Mary Lily and the Kenans, who thread through them both most deliciously) by David Leon Chandler were published, 60 MINUTES did a piece on the mysterious death of Mary Lily -- with the cooperation of Thomas S. Kenan III, then known as the "family historian."

But Tommy refused to divulge the results of an exhumation and autopsy (the third over the years) he'd ordered, so when I happened to visit Chapel Hill in 1990, and somehow found my way to the headquarters of what was then Kenan Oil, and the President -- the GREAT Lee Shafer -- allowed me to use Tommy's own desk and gave me his home phone number, I called, offering to swap some info.

I offered to let him know a secret about Tennessee Williams' death in exchange for the autopsy results. Tommy wouldn't have it, and after a turned-terse finish to the conversation, we hung up.

I was going to tell him that Tennessee Williams had died infested with crab lice -- something I thought too embarrassing for the world to know at that time. DISCLAIMER: The artist Mark Beard actually made this fact known to the public in an art book published in the late 1980s -- an illustration in which, "The Ghost of Tennessee Williams Leaving the Hotel Elysee" he has offered to PAY me to put on a cover of WALKING ON GLASS when it is published in print. One copy of this limited edition book sold at Sotheby's auction a few years ago for $30,000.00 USD!!!

>>> NOW, ALL THAT TOLD: Will someone at SOME level of Coca-Cola puh-LEEEEEZE come to Wilmington and kiss Mrs. Pender's ass??? At 'Mrs. Pender's Cafe' on Front Street, the whole PLACE is done up in Coca-Cola memorabilia -- it's even on her T-shirts -- but a rep from the local bottler disrespected her a few years ago, and she's only served PEPSI since!!!

If y'all can pull this off for me and get her back to selling COKE, which she CLEARLY PREFERS, she might just finally allow me to enter her County (where my father was born in the town of Burgaw)!!!

Thank you.
Scott

>>> HOLY CRAP!!!: I just sent (6:16 PM now), a copy of this blogpost to SALLIE BINGHAM (See: http://salliebingham.com/ ). I hope it gets through the Fox News Filters!!!

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