Famous Drinks, Chatter #423

Have you ever noticed there are drinks named after famous people? The ones I’m most familiar with are the Roy Rogers with coca cola, grenadine syrup and a cherry, the Shirley Temple with seven-up, grenadine syrup and, also, with a cherry, and the Arnold Palmer with tea and lemonade. The Arnold Palmer used to be called the half and half. Around the golf clubs, it became known as the Arnold Palmer because he drank it all the time and the name stuck. One day at a self-service drink bar I mixed lemonade with ice tea. I liked it, so I started ordering it at restaurants. One day the waiter said, “An Arnold Palmer.” I said, “A what?” He said, “They call it an Arnold Palmer.” So I’ve been ordering it since and the waiters know what I’m talking about.
When I was married my husband didn’t drink the Arnold Palmer and neither did I. When joining him for lunch years after we were divorced, I discovered we were both drinking Arnold Palmers. I thought it was curious that now we both liked the same drink.
It is interesting that Roy Rogers and Shirley Temple didn’t care for the drinks named after them. I liked seven-up better than coca cola, so when I was a kid, I enjoyed ordering Shirley Temple’s because they were so sweet and they made me feel grown up drinking a mixed drink The cherry added to the all grown up feeling. Funny that the drink that made me feel grown up was named after a child actress.