The summer before my 4th grade year, my family moved into a house my parent’s built on a six acre wood lot in the middle of an older neighborhood. It was in the rolling hills of East Tennessee not far from the banks of the Tennessee River. We lived on a dogwood trail, meaning, come April the streets would be active with motorists driving at a snail’s pace following permanent pink dots leading them by the blooms of the pink and white trees and flowery landscaped yards. Our house was tucked deep down a long gravel driveway and surrounded by forest.
The roads through our neighborhood were hilly and often dropped off into steep gullies. These were places to hide from cars passing by, find box turtles, or just cool off in the shade on hot summer days. We were fond of these wooded respites and often avoided walking on the roads by dropping off into these secret oasis’s. Oasi? Is that the plural form? It should be.
Mark and Matt were brothers the same age as myself and my older brother, Chris. They often visited their grandparents who were our closest neighbors through the woods from our house. We became an inseparable foursome often exploring the wooded roadside havens.
On one of our excursions we came across what looked like an old dumping ground for various trash of years past. Blue and green glass bottles, metal gas cans, and beer cans were buried in degrees of decaying leaf litter. We became particularly interested in the beer cans we found. Among these were cone top cans that we didn’t know even existed and were opened with a bottle opener. These gave way to old Budweiser cans that were gold and could only be opened with a church key can opener puncturing the flat top of the steel can. Other cans offered a banner that read, “Tab Top” as these cylindrical vessels were transitioning to pull tabs.
Our curiosity hit a peak when we found two cans with James Bond girls on them: James Bond’s 007 Special Blend. After procuring our cans, we left the dump and took our treasure home. Soon after we bought a book called, The Beer Can Bible (revealing, yet again, that humans are very religious people), which gave a brief history and value of old beer cans. The book was copyrighted in 1976 and our 007 cans were valued, if in mint condition, at $125.00. Jackpot. Granted, our cans were nowhere near mint, but what a rush to find something rare and with beautiful girls. Who would have thought a dogwood trail could produce such fine specimens?
James Bond Beer was brewed by National Brewing in the late sixties but only for a brief time until National learned that they should have checked the trademark on James Bond commercial products. Meanwhile, they had produced seven different cans donning seven different James Bond girls. The beer was only distributed to four cities and my hometown of Knoxville happened to be one of the four. Today, these cans fetch up to $700.00 depending on the condition.