LORAN SMITH: Arnold Palmer even put his mark on iced tea

AUGUSTA – When I first arrived at the Augusta National Golf Club for the playing of the 2016 Masters, I went to the outside bar adjacent to the clubhouse and ordered an “Arnold Palmer.”

It wasn’t that I was that thirsty and the heat was so unbearable, it was that I wanted to sit out among the umbrellas and toast the Great American sports hero whose fabled career is now hampered by the unrelenting aging process. Arnold, as you have probably heard often this week is 86. His heath is failing, and his army is in retreat. Many have gone on to that great golf course in the sky.

This is a man who won championships and was a business sensation. In his days of yore, he had the gifted touch on the golf course and the Midas touch in business. Whatever he endorsed, whatever he put his name on resulted in sales that soared to exalted sights.

Like the drink Arnold Palmer, which is essentially half iced tea and half lemonade although he has been quoted to make the drink just right, the iced tea must be dominant.

You may know the story. On a hot day in Palm Springs, California years ago, while designing a golf course, he ordered an iced tea and lemonade which a lady overheard and said to the bartender, “I’ll have that Palmer drink.” Soon everybody was ordering an “Arnold Palmer” at golf courses everywhere. It wasn’t long before Arnold marketed the drink commercially. Annual sales today are over a $100,000 million dollars, reaffirming that any product with his name on it has always engendered widespread appeal.

If you are Southern and grew up in a rural setting or a small town, you likely grew up on iced tea. We never used lemon. Lemons cost money. We were doing good to pay for the ample sugar it took to make sweet iced tea.

In Middle Georgia in the ’50s and ’60s, iced tea was a mealtime staple. It was standard throughout the South. Apparently iced tea also played well in Pennsylvania, Arnold Palmer’s home state.

I have had fun, flummoxing waiters in New York by asking for Iced tea, even in the summer, but cursory research confirms that you can find iced tea most anywhere in the world—even the United Kingdom, which is known for tea brewed hot with ice never within arm’s-length.

Anybody with a farm background, more than likely, advances the notion that their mother could fry chicken better that your mother. They also would proclaim that their mother’s iced tea was better than your mother’s iced tea.

Iced tea was a treat especially in the peak of summer months when the oppressive heat pressed down without relief. The sun reinforced its unrelenting dominance. All thirsts needed quenching and often. We drank considerable amount of water mainly because everybody had a well whose contents were downright tasty and refreshing. The best water I can remember was when that first bucket came up and you dipped into its contents with the “community” dipper.

Tea was first grown in America, in South Carolina. It is the only state where tea has been grown commercially. Cook books with sweet ice tea recipes date back to the mid to late 1800s.

My mother was not so keen on her children drinking ice tea growing up on the farm. She invented her own “Arnold Palmer.” She poured a half glass of iced tea and then filled the glass with milk. It was very tasty and refreshing, and, of course, very filling.

Don’t think tea and milk would generate startling commercial sales, but when Arnold Palmer began ordering tea and lemonade, I bet he had no idea that his recipe would someday put him in company with Croesus.