Behold: The Fresca button

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that Fresca was the favorite drink of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a button installed on the desk in the White House’s Oval Office which would summon his military aide to bring the drink.

Wikipedia, “Fresca.”

There are a ton of hilarious anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson but this might be my favorite. Dude was way too awesome to pick up the phone or use the intercom or heaven forbid, actually get up and walk out of his office to grab a Fresca. He had a special Fresca button installed so he didn’t have to bother with all that.

Fun fact: Fresca happens to be my favorite soda, too. I stopped drinking soda with sugar in it at some point in high school and by now a full serving of any non-diet soda makes me feel almost sick from the sweetness. I know that diet soda is also not good for me, so spare me the lectures. Fresca is delicious. It’s one of our very few grapefruit-flavored things, and I feel like supporting it is a good way of letting candy-developers everywhere understand that I would purchase more grapefruit-flavored things if they became available.

Also, I like drinking Fresca because it is inherently hilarious for reasons I can’t really define. You’ll have to ask Judge Smalls I guess.

Unfortunately it is surprisingly hard to find Fresca other than in 12 packs in supermarkets, and I rarely find myself moved to buy a 12 pack of soda in the supermarket. The other flavors of Fresca that came out a few years back pale in comparison to the OG Fresca. Don’t water down my grapefruit flavor with peach, please. No disrespect to peach-flavored stuff.

On my campus television show in college we used to say the show was sponsored by Fresca and drink it on air all the time. Often that Fresca was spiked with 99 Bananas, a ridiculous liquor. That was the first but certainly not last time I was scolded for drinking on camera. And I’m really not much of a drinker.

The news about LBJ and Fresca comes via Dan Lewis’ Now I Know newsletter, which you should probably check out.

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