House Wine of the South

Whew! Did Hurricane Harvey take a turn towards Monticello? From the traffic downtown on Saturday, it looked like an evacuation had been ordered. Car after car circled the square heading north, but all the drivers and passengers looked so happy and then it was apparent from those red and black flags flying in the wind.

Yes, they were all heading north to the first UGA home game. Someone needs to come up with a business plan to slow these folks down and leave some cash in Jasper County.

Summer days are fleeting fast, days are getting shorter, a little nip in the air at night, football, football, football. For our football folks, the long awaited football season has finally arrived. From teeny tiny tots to the bigger-than-life football players, the fans and relatives love ‘em.

In the South, there is one season that never ends, drinking iced tea season. Sure an iced tea is great in the summer, but we still drink it iced in the winter. Whether you are a straight up, unsweetened tea drinker, coma-inducing sweet tea drinker or the modern day sweetened tea drinker, AKA, those who use the little packages of yellow, blue or pink artificial sweetener, tea is as Dolly Parton’s character in “Steel Magnolias” declared is the “House Wine of the South”.

How did Americans ever get tea over here? Well, there was this little tea party held in the Boston Harbor a couple hundred years ago that proves we were already into our caffeine clutch. As the story goes, the Pilgrims arrived with their tea bags and sat down one afternoon to hash over the local news, tea time. Europe was introduced to tea by the Portuguese who also produced a future Queen of England, who arrived with chaws of tea. Soon the whole country was in love with tea time.

And as long as we are on the subject, Europe also has football(soccer), which they actually play with their feet. Imagine playing soccer with our pig skin version football?

How ‘bout a spot of tea during the game? Shut ya mouth…