For my job, I travel quite a bit (for me). Sometimes I’ve been gone two solid weeks. In one case, I was alone in the Washington, DC area for a week on my own and then a week at a conference with colleagues. The first week, each time I ordered a cherry cola, the waiter or waitress would say something that I could not understand. I asked a few times, and I still didn’t get it.
The following week my colleagues joined me (I passed that class, by the way). At dinner the first night, I ordered a cherry cola. I didn’t understand what the waitress said, and my colleague asked her to write it down. Turned out, it was Rob Roy. In the Washington, DC area, a cherry cola is known as a Rob Roy. She said that this was the male version of a female drink: Shirley Temple. A Shirley Temple is a lemon/lime soda pop mixed with cherry flavor.
Years before this, a former supervisor enjoyed iced tea with lemonade. No matter what restaurant we went to (and he treated all of the office out to lunch at least once-a-month) he ordered a drink: half lemonade and half iced tea. One day near Boss’s Day while I was shopping in the local grocery store, in the tea isle I saw a can with the name Arnold Palmer. It was the drink he enjoyed for lunch. I bought it for him. He was delighted to find it in a can. I can’t remember if he didn’t know it was called an Arnold Palmer or if he was surprised to see it in a can … or both. No matter, it’s yet another drink named after a famous character.
There are many drinks with interesting names that have alcohol in them, but I can’t have alcohol due to migraines. (I choose not to suffer that way on purpose, so I avoid the stuff.) What other drinks are named after famous characters (yes, people are characters too)? I know of these three:
Cherry Cola (I don’t say Coca Cola or Pepsi, because I don’t care which): Rob Roy
Cherry favored Lemon/Lime Soda Pop: Shirley Temple
1/2 Lemonade and 1/2 Iced Tea: Arnold Palmer
I look forward to any others you know of! Please share here…
Humor Happens 