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The
Road Not Taken
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . .
Dave Garretson |
 The
World's Best Seltzer
Bottling Futon Factory
I'd seen it a hundred times on the Three Stooges. "Look
here, ya knucklehead," Moe would say, and then spritz Larry
with a seltzer bottle. That was everything I knew about seltzer
in seltzer bottles. So when Dave and Evan invited me over to
their futon warehouse/seltzer works for an afternoon of bottling,
I wasn't sure what to expect. It's not one of your everyday
things.
"Hi!" shouted Dave as he threw open the rusty old
door. Dressed from head to toe in heavy rain gear, he looked
as if he belonged on the crew of a fishing trawler.
Of course, we weren't going fishing. We were in the Homestead
area of Pittsburgh, a grayish neighborhood of old warehouses
and apartment buildings, once the center of steel production
for the entire world. The steel mills are gone from Homestead
now, but the 109-year-old Pittsburgh Seltzer Works continues
on, in Homestead, in the basement of the Futon Mill warehouse.
Dave Faigen led me past stacks of boxed futon frames, past bagged
futon mattresses, past the bales of cotton and piles of foam.
We kept going. Normally, when I visit, we talk about the futon
business, about Dave and Evan's futon stores in Pittsburgh,
about their days working for futon old timer Bob Loop, about
all our futon friends, futon gossip. But today is not about
futons. Today, it's seltzer time!
Dave and his partner, Evan Hirsh, have been longtime friends
and partners in the futon business. Last year, they teamed up
with a third friend to buy the Pittsburgh Seltzer Works. "The
previous owner said from the moment he met us, he knew that
we would buy the company," explained Evan. "That's
because we went straight to the equipment instead of to the
books!"
Ah, the equipment. Tucked away in a corner of the basement,
behind stacks of old wooden soda cases, the seltzer plant ka-chunk-a-lunks
along. My tour of the "plant", which is about the
size of a two-car garage, takes only a minute. Stacks of wooden
cases, each holding six seltzer bottles, are piled to the ceiling,
thousands of them. These antique bottles are heavy thick glass,
each topped with a metal spout and lever (syphon head, it's
called). I pick one up, and ask a silly question, "Do you
ever spritz anybody like the Three Stooges?" "You
bet," they both answer, "All the time!" and start
spraying seltzer at each other.
At one end of the room is a big clean area where the bottles
are re-habbed and cleaned. The bottles, which are 50-80 years
old, require a lot of TLC. At the other end of the room is the
business office, a single desk with a phone on it; and ... in
the middle ... ka-chunk-a-lunk!
Dave and Evan explain the process to me. They start with ordinary
tap water, double filter it, and super-cool it down to near-freezing.
"Water accepts the carbonation better when it's cold,"
explains Evan. From there, the water goes into the carbonation
chamber, where water is pumped in the bottom, carbon dioxide
from nearby cylinders is pumped in the top, and a mechanical
paddle mixes them together. The newly-carbonated water is then
pumped into the bottle-go-round.
Their explanation is accompanied by hissing and gurgling sounds
in the background. Once the equipment starts up, all you can
hear is the deafening ka-chunk-a-lunk, ka-chunk-a-lunk of the
antique machinery. Dave hands Evan an empty bottle, Evan hands
back a full one. While Dave gets the next empty from the case,
Evan gets the next full one from the bottle-go-round. Ka-chunk-a-lunk,
ka-chunk-a-lunk!
"Trouble with Number Three!" shouts Evan. "That's
the second one half-filled!" The noise stops as he tinkers
with a spigot. There are six. The clatter resumes. Ka-chunk-a-lunk,
ka-chunk-a-lunk!
The bottles whiz by in a hurry, and they are fascinating. At
one time, there were hundreds of seltzer bottlers in the country.
As they went out of business, their inventory was bought up
by surviving companies. Each glass bottle is printed or engraved
with the name of a long-gone company. There are a hundred or
more, from all over the northeast USA, with names like "Letzgo"
or "Bubble-Up". Of course, a lot of bottles say "Pittsburgh
Seltzer".
A case of seltzer is $7, delivered anywhere in Pittsburgh, $6
if you pick it up at the futon store. "Our delivery customers
are the most unusual mix of people you can imagine," says
Evan. "And us, we're the only people in the history of
the world to be in the futon business and the seltzer business.
Gotta be, right?"
Ka-chunk-a-lunk! Ka-chunk-a-lunk!
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