Rick Watson

Syndicated Writer

Sunday, Apr 05, 2009

I like my tea sweet. I'm not sure, if it's a “Southern thang” or what, but if you ask for sweet tea in Boston, they look at you as if you were an alien. They usually offer unsweetened tea and point to the little blue and pink packs of artificial sweetener on the table. What I’d like to say is, “Hey man, wake up and smell the biscuits,” but what I usually say is, “no, just give me a Co-cola.”  The fact is, I'd rather have sharp burning bamboo shoots jammed underneath my fingernails than drink any kind of artificial sweetener.

My mama would have a fit if she heard me say this, but the sweet tea she used to make was not my favorite.

I think she used Louisiane tea and it was good, but the Holy Grail of tea was brewed by Lois Robbins, who was related to us and lived nearby.

This was in the early ’60s and she had a coal-fired cooking stove.

The beast sat in the corner of her kitchen and she cooked three meals a day on that old stove.  

It was pleasant in her kitchen on cold winter days, but in August, it got hotter than Alabama asphalt.

She had a house full of kids, so she started cooking about mid-morning. I would often find myself sitting on her back porch gazing in through the screen door as she worked in the kitchen.

She moved with the precision of a dancer, shifting pots and skillets from here to there.

Lois had a metal teapot that was black as charcoal from years of service on the old stove.

She used the old utensil to boil water for the gallons of tea that she made at lunch and dinner. After boiling the water, she'd let small bags of Lipton tea steep for about five minutes before pouring it into a gallon Mason Jar half full of cold water.  

She then mixed in just the right amount of sugar.

When she stirred the tea, you could watch the sugar swirl like tiny snowflakes in a snow globe until it disappeared completely.

At about 11:30 p.m. she'd call in all the kids to eat things like butter beans, hominy, cream corn and fried okra.

She always cooked a pone of cornbread as big as a Pizza Hut Pizza. The smell of baking cornbread must be how heaven smells at lunch time.

My mother threatened all her kids with dismemberment if we ate at Lois’ house.

“They’ve got kids of their own, and they didn't take y’all to raise,” she threatened.

Lois would always ask us in to eat, but we rarely did. We’d sit on the back porch and drool, however we always accepted the big old glass of sweet tea that she offered.

In the summertime, the ice cubes would pop as they warmed. Thirst didn’t stand a chance against that tea.

Today, I used Jilda’s recipe to make a jug of sweet tea and I sat out on the screened side porch to watch the birds in the waning light.

My tea was refreshing, but was it as good as the tea that Lois made?

I had to admit that my tea was good, but the fond memory of Lois’ sweet tea is hard to beat.