When I started this blog I grabbed the name Fletcher’s Castoria for no reason other than I used to enjoy this elixir as a child. Although it was a laxative, it tasted so good (root beer flavor … see: Fletcher's Laxative) that I sometimes feigned constipation just to get a spoon full. When I chose this name, I actually thought that this product no longer existed since I hadn’t seen it in drug stores for quite a few years. I was wrong. It is still available through the Mentholatum Company (acquired by Rohto Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd in Japan). You can search on-line for it.
Apparently others also enjoyed this medication as a child. There is one New Yorker who seems so obsessed with it that he/she has gone around New York City scouting out old Fletcher’s signs on the side of buildings (see: Forgotten New York). Although this may seem over-the-top, I fully expect that, many years hence, someone equally fanatical will dig into Google’s archives to retrieve my entries from this blog site … well after I am taking a dirt nap (kind of like how Emily Dickinson knew her poetry would be read after she passed.) Then again, maybe not …
