We called a root beer float a brown cow. Precise terminology probably varied from region to region. I don't remember Pepsi from my childhood soda fountains- prob. not popular yet. They destroyed one of the old soda fountains in a town where I once worked. I bought two of the verde antique marble counter slabs for use with a fireplace, each about 7 feet long and almost 2 inches thick- they literally weighed a ton. A moving company smashed one, but I still have the other.

Don Firth, all I remember is: "He watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one---." Don't recall your "green river" but I do remember that for a while, we had "ammonia coke." The soda fountain jockey put a few drops of ammonia in the coke with an eye dropper.