The Yuckraker

Washington County pharmaceutical salesman Mike Fitzpatrick had sweet tea when he took a weekend trip to Atlanta in 1994 and has never forgotten about the delectible beverage.

He trots this fact out from time to time when among friends, continually asking them if they’ve ever had sweet tea and saying, “Oh, man, it’s awesome. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

He also uses this Northern deficiency as a convenient way for him to remind people about how different and relaxing and great the South, a place he’s been to once, is.

“In the summer, when it gets to be 85 or 90 here in Washington County and it reminds me so much of Atlanta — or as I call it, The ATL — there’s nothing like it,” said Fitzpatrick.

“You can set your calendars to it and, sure enough, Mike went on another one of his ’sweet tea’ kicks again today,” said Fitzpatrick’s friend, Tony Lumars, who just completed a round of golf with him. “It’s usually not an issue, but once or twice a summer when we’re sitting in the clubhouse, Mike will go into this dog-and-pony mode.

“He’ll ask the girl behind the counter if they have any sweet tea and she’ll say, yeah, we put sugar in our sweet tea. And Mike will say ‘OK, I’ll try some.’ with this dopey smile on his face.”

Lumars went on to say that this sequence of events usually ends with Fitzpatrick berating the counter girl for passing the course’s tea that is a bit sweet off as sweet tea and saying you can’t get “real” sweet tea outside of the South.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under community, satire, comedy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.