I apologize in advance for this being so long a story. As collectors we all love the hunt. In fact so much that once we find that rare item, we are onto the next one. Sometimes what gets lost in this is the story behind a find in which in some cases the can be better than the item. In this case it is pretty close.
About a year ago I found a 4 door Victor Cooler, all there and running, but needed some definite cleaning and small repair. The story behind it was it was from a small country store near the North Carolina-Virgina border and had been there since being new in the fifties. I thought, what a great story. Since then I have had thoughts of creating a small soda shop, but I did not have that large a space. I see so many pictures of some great ones on these sites, but thought how am I going to find something like that. So from time to time I would look on Craigslist only to find soda fountain items or fountain so large or expensive they would never work. That was until about 2 weeks ago when I came across one listed as being purchased new back in the sixties and still with it's original owner. The kicker was it still had the original Dole Citation dispenser still connected to it. For the price she was asking the Dole Citation seemed to be worth about 1/3 or more of that value. So I reached out to her and asked her about the fountain. She said her family got it new in the 60's when they owned a cafe and never got rid of it. I asked if the cafe was still around and she no it was closed, but it was were she lived. She said the cafe was built in 1950 and was added onto so they could live there. The cafe was then turned into a bar in the early 70's, but then is what she moved away. She said the system had not been used in 20-30 years and was not working, but should be mostly complete and original. We then arranged an time and my son and I and a friend with a trailer went down to see her (she was about 1 hour East of Raleigh, NC). When we got there she took us to the back where this was stored. It appeared to be in great shape and the Dole Citation Dispenser "appeared to be complete". The original carbonator was still there, but the compressor was gone. We worked out a price and we loaded it on the trailer. As we brought it outside the owner stopped and looked at us and said "this has not been outside this building since it was brought into here new in the 1960's". So to me another great story behind a pretty cool item.
Here is the link to some pictures. If you change the speed (lower right hand corner) to slow you will catch some of the text I added to some pictures.
http://s40.photobucket.com/user/ndercole/slideshow/Soda%20Fountain 
