3 – A Long Strange Trip

Both Shirley and I are tea drinkers, although Shirley does have a taste for iced Coffee and Espresso. Not me, I truly gave up coffee at around the age of 4 or 5.  My mother would give us coffee that was mostly milk and one day due to peer pressure or whatever I was not given my milk with coffee.  It was a Saturday at my grandparents apartment in the projects in the Dorchester section of Boston, MA. My mother took myself and my sisters there every Saturday where a large contingent of my grandparent’s relatives and friends would gather for chicken soup and roasted chicken or just drop by to visit. When I was still that young, there were people coming and going all day. My grandparent’s small apartment in the projects was the place where everyone congregated, kibitzed and ate. The centerpiece was their table which in their small tenement apartment folded up and sat along the wall looking like a table only big enough to hold knick knacks until Saturday when it was unfolded into a long dining room table big enough to seat 8. I know that was the size, I have that table, and use it opened up large gatherings.

But on one Saturday for whatever reason, I got tea (milk mostly) instead of coffee. Writing this, I seem to recall that I asked to try tea instead of coffee. Whatever the reason, I never drank coffee again. The fact that my wife was a tea drinker was one of the reasons I asked her out for a lifetime of dates, this trip is certainly our longest date.

For our RV trip we pre-purchased all the tea we figured we would need, and packed a lot of it in a large plastic container (~ 30 qt) in the storage compartment. Much of the tea we drink we purchase online, whether they are bagged or loose. Somewhere, I think when we camped at Raton Pass along the highway that used to be the Santa Fe Trail, the container of tea went missing. Probably when I was reshuffling that storage compartment and I pulled out nearly all the containers and loose items I left the tea container behind. Probably. Shirley fortunately was able to find her most important wake-up tea, Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder in a couple of stores, so her stash was replenished. My important wake-up teas were loose Assam teas that I purchased online from Upton Tea (  <-  great teas at great prices! ) and a drive day wake “way up” tea from Celestial Seasonings called Fast Lane. Neither could be replaced. I did find an odd sort of replacement, but that is another strange trip story.

Everytime something goes missing, I claim that it was in the same container as the tea, but mostly those other things do show up and the tea is still missing. Just earlier today I was speaking to a couple of full-time RVers that it turned out came from Bridgewater, MA. They also had a few items that got left behind inexplicably. It is all part of the adventure.

Footnote: I stopped putting milk in my tea over 30 years ago and I haven’t used sugar for about 20 years. I drink it straight up, and never call me a tea-totaler.