WINONA (AP) -- An old-time baby Coke bottle, made of glass thicker than the nerdiest bifocals, sells for $12.50 at the R.D. Cone Co. antiques shop on Second Street in Winona.
Three blocks over, at the Coca Cola Bottling Co. of Winona, the original 6.5-ounce contoured Coke bottles are still meant for quenching a thirst, not collecting.
"To me, it's the right size for a drink," says Clint L. Kuhlmann, the 75-year-old owner of one of the last two bottling plants in the country to refill the coveted bottles.
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Minnesota had more than 50 Coca Cola bottlers back in the days before aluminum cans. The number peaked in the 1930s, when there were 1,225 Coke bottlers nationwide. Today, just four of the small, family-run businesses remain.
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Now, they're a collector's item. Once they were the only way to buy a soda.
Kuhlmann sells a 24-bottle case for $5. Plus a 10-cent deposit per bottle.
He never planned on being the relic of a nearly obsolete business. Coke just tastes better in a cool glass bottle, Kuhlmann insists. So as long as he can maintain a stash of bottles -- the refillable ones, thick enough to withstand repeated use, that haven't been manufactured in ages -- he'll keep filling them, just like his dad did for more than 70 years.
He hands out business cards that list just the last four digits of his phone number. And his square, brick factory is every bit as dated as his perspective. Scruffy little bottles marked on the bottom from places as near as St. Paul and as far as Louisville jiggle along an ancient conveyor belt.
First they're sanitized, then filled with two gulps of soda pop, capped and dropped into a rickety, wooden "Drink Coca Cola" crate. There's a crate just like it propped in the front window at R.D. Cone Co., priced at $75.
Only the cans of Cherry Coke and plastic Mello Yello 20-ouncers in a back room give away the year.
"These kids are walking around with quart-size bottles," Kuhlmann said.
He makes his money distributing what the Big Gulp generation wants. But filling the old bottles is what he knows. Wearing a green-and-white-striped work shirt with "Clint" over one pocket and the red, wavy Coca Cola label over the other, the old man, fingers thick as sausages, hoists crates of empty bottles onto the conveyor belt all day long.
"I was brought up in it," he said, patting his belly, nicely padded from decades of sugary drinks. He switched to Diet Coke a few years ago.
Kuhlmann's dad, Clinton A. Kuhlmann, started out washing pop bottles 11 hours a day, for $10 a week in 1921. He soon bought into the local bottling company, and in 1933, he and his partners became official bottlers for Coca Cola. The senior Kuhlmann bought out his partners and worked at the plant, side by side with his son, until his early 90s. He died in October at 96.
Minnesota had more than 50 Coca Cola bottlers back in the days before aluminum cans. The number peaked in the 1930s, when there were 1,225 Coke bottlers nationwide. Today, just four of the small, family-run businesses remain.
A company in Escanaba, Mich., refills 10-ounce bottles; the Deming, N.M., plant does the 16-ounce bottles. Winona refills 10- and 16-ounce bottles as well as the 6.5-size. Only one other, Union City Coca Cola Co. in Tennessee, refills 6.5-ounce bottles.
The Coca Cola Co. continues to supply syrup to this small contingency of loyal bottlers who insist on doing things the old-fashioned way. "They're getting the idea that this is an important historical thing," Kuhlmann said. "If they don't watch it, it'll be gone."
Red Wing Coca Cola Bottling stopped filling bottles a couple of years ago and, like most, is strictly a distributor now. Owner Jim Grantman gets what bottles he needs for traditional clients from Winona.
"The bottles are worth so much, people steal them," Grantman said. "If there's a $2.40 deposit on 24 bottles, and the bottles are worth $10 each at a flea market, how smart do you have to be? We just weren't getting them back."
But as the competition gives up, Kuhlmann is able to build his stock of refillable Coke bottles. After the Jefferson City Coca Cola Bottling Co. in Missouri filled its last 6.5-ounce bottle last month, Kuhlmann arranged to buy its stock. He's got around 800 cases of 6.5-ounce bottles, some dating back to the 1930s.
He fills them once a month -- running larger glass bottles the rest of the time -- and distributes to the few remaining clients in a 40-mile radius who can be counted on to return the empties.
You can find the 10-ounce bottles at Beano's deli in downtown Winona -- between the Ruby Tangelo Snapple and gold cans of Caffeine Free Coke -- but don't even think about trying to sneak one out the door.
"The bottles stay in the restaurant," a manager barked.
The 6.5-ounce Cokes go mostly to "private parties -- citizens of Winona," said Kuhlmann's second cousin, Butch Kuhlmann, who handles sales development.
No matter how hard people beg to buy a baby bottle or two, Kuhlmann won't sell. But if you've got your own Coke bottles, he'll be glad to fill them. One guy from the Twin Cities shows up twice a year to refill his 18 cases of small bottles.
Kuhlmann also fends off the collectors who drool over his wooden Coke boxes, old poster advertisements and rounded red vending machines from back when a bottle of pop cost 15 cents. He keeps most of his memorabilia locked up and displays just a few things, like an antique cooler, at home in the basement.
"My wife isn't too fond of me hanging that stuff. She thinks it clutters the place," he said.
Kuhlmann's son-in-law, LeRoy Telstad, who helps run the bottling company, envisions a Coke museum in Winona one day. But for now, he's focused on filling bottles until at least 2005, when the company will celebrate its 100th anniversary.
That sounds good to Kuhlmann, who says he can't retire anyway. "My wife don't want me around the house."
"I don't know what I'd do if I retired," Kuhlmann said, bowing his head and kicking the toe of his beat-up work boot. "I'd probably sell Coke on the corner."
