Root Beer & Tea Abuse

Spring has come on little bird feet to Periwinkle County, so the A&W has opened a month early.

Ansel and Wilma go to Sarasota for the winter and come back to boil footlongs and pour frosty drafts for their rollerblading carhops to deliver to the cars and 16s [4x4s] at their squacky order boxes only in the summer. They were getting a bit tired of the high sun of FL, though, and were just as happy to be back early

One year they tried staying open through the winter, putting the carhops on snow boards, but that convinced them only of the need for universal health care, since they ended up with a lot of orthopedic bills for the hops, and body shop bills for the 16s they crashed into.

Betsy and Johnny Kendy had a day off school last weeek, for an in-service harangue of the teachers by Marcella "Sharpie" Sharp, a TV evangelist turned motivational speaker, so Claire and Randall Nathan took their grandchildren to the A&W for lunch. It is one of Claire's least-favorite places, but she will do anything the grandchildren want to do.

It's not so much that Claire dislikes the A&W. It's the root beer that bothers her.

She traces it to a pony cart incident when she was a little girl. A neighbor man had a pony cart in which he would load up the neighborhood kids and take them for a ride, ending at the Dog 'n Suds, which later under new ownership became the Frank 'n Stein. One hot night, he ordered a frosty root beer for the pony, too. The sight of root beer running thrugh the wild-eyed pony's yellow teeth and down its hairy chin still haunts Claire's night mares.

She is convinced that the tea party people were abused as children, quite possibly by being forced to watch ponies drink tea.