Family Life

05.13.09 | FL News Team

You can be a Pepper too -- for a price. Later today an historic document will go under the gavel at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, Texas. The document is the original Dr. Pepper formula, a chance find at an antique store.

Bill Waters says he was driving through Texas when he stopped at an antique shop in the town of Shamrock. He was looking through a box full of old medicine bottles and discovered, wedged in the back of the box, an old book. He purchased it only knowing it had come from the estate of someone named L.B. Woods who once ran a shoe store in the same building as the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas.

Waters says he was ready to list the book on eBay when he decided to do a little research. He discovered The Old Corner Drug Store is known as the birthplace of America's first soft drink, Dr. Pepper. What he had purchased for pennies turned out to be a notebook containing the original formula for Dr. Peppers Pepsin Bitters.

By the way the original formula probably is not the same we find in Dr. Pepper cans and bottles today. The original mixture calls for a dollop of denatured rum among other things.