Drink to the Cold War

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 13, 1999 | by Stephen Goode

It's a "blast from the past," just like the very funny movie earlier this year of the same name in which Calvin and Helen Webber, played by Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek, enter their elaborate and enormous bomb shelter at the time of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and don't emerge for 35 years -- to find a very different America.

This blast from the past is water that was bottled at the time of the Cuban missile crisis by the Chalet Suzanne Foods Restaurant and Company Inn of Lake Wales, Fla., for nuclear-survival kits put together for the U.S. Navy and NASA.

The company assembled 4,000 cases of this Florida water, of which about 300 cases of 12 cans each remain, Chalet Suzanne co-owner Erick Hinshaw told the Associated Press. The others were given away to friends who were going on camping trips, he said.

The red, white and gold cans have no labels, which were forbidden by federal regulations. Chalet Suzanne now is selling them at $15 a can to raise money for the Cold War Museum in Fairfax, Va. The water came from a well on the restaurant's property, which is in central Florida.