As many of you readers know, I am technologically challenged. Within my home I get by, though resetting the time on all of the digital devices I have does bring on a little stress.

Outside the home I have more challenges than I care to. Some ATMs have thrown me for a loop, and I have actually frozen with fear over some of the high-tech self-service gas pumps.

Just when I thought everything that could go high-tech had, I read about the new Coca-Cola Freestyle touch screen soda fountain. According to the article, “The Freestyle machine is billed as the Fountain of the Future and has a touch-screen, Wi-Fi-enabled, tracking chip equipped, soda-dispensing gizmo designed by automaker Ferrari. It uses medication dosing technology to create some 125 Coca-Cola products, many of which, like Orange Coke and Vanilla Sprite Zero, aren’t available in bottles anywhere.”

Several thoughts went through my mind when I read that article. 1. With 125 choices I can picture kids like my grandsons taking more than an hour to decide what to get. 2. The high-tech industry has created as lot of hyphenated words. 3. I will no doubt never use such a machine. 4. I came from an era when there were real soda fountains and no computer chips.

When I was a kid — these five words always bring eye rolls from my grandsons — we had several soda fountains in Norway where I grew up. There was Harlow’s, Fletcher’s, Ashton’s Drug Store, J.J. Newberry, Stone’s Drug Store and Barjo’s Restaurant. I may have even forgotten some.

I haven’t, however, forgotten the sweetness of the cherry cokes or the vanilla phosphates or the concoctions we kids created like chocolate ginger ale. Those were the days my friends, those were the days.

I’m sure that many of you readers, at least those over age 50, have some fond soda fountain memories of your own.

Once upon a time in America just about every drug store had a soda fountain. As well as dispensing prescriptions, sound medical advice and magazines, they could dispense ice cream sodas, cherry cokes and lime rickeys, not to mention the best darn grilled cheese sandwich you could get anywhere.

Sadly, the days of drug stores with soda fountains are long gone, replaced by big box pharmacies. I will say that such stores are convenient with longer hours than the drug stores of my youth and a much larger inventory of items, including some grocery products.

They lack the warmth of the old time drug stores and I find some things very strange about them. For example, if one has a need to get a prescription filled or purchase over-the-counter products, there is a good chance that one just might be sick.

If a person is sick they probably don’t feel like being on their feet for very long. So, how come the pharmacy department and the OTC products are always way in the back of these giant box stores?

I guess I got a little side tracked from Coca-Cola’s new soda machine, but the way I see it I’d rather have my cherry coke sitting at a real soda fountain in a real drug store than to get it from a high-tech machine that I will probably never figure out how to use anyway.