Iced-Tea Cup
I’m not sure I ever would have made it through Vietnam without the care packages my mother sent me. I might have died from starvation. Hey, some of the food in the army wasn’t that bad, but it was as bland as my nephew Willie’s gumbo. Even worse, you couldn’t find a jar of jalapeño peppers or a bottle of Tabasco within nine thousand miles of Can Tho to make the food taste better.
Fortunately for me, my mother, Merritt Robertson, took care of what I needed. In one of the first boxes, she mailed me a pair of work boots. Inside one of the boots was a Tupperware iced-tea cup and a couple of jars of jalapeño peppers; in the other one, she had put a couple of cans of SPAM and beans and wieners.
Somehow, Momma’s iced-tea cup stayed with me for twelve months in Vietnam, and I’ve carried it in my back pocket ever since. I drink two gallons of iced tea a day, and my wife and I make it the old-fashioned way. It’s the same way Moses made tea—Hebrewed it!
We put three tea bags in a pot of water, turn on the heat on the stove, and let it boil. Then we put a lid on the pot and let it steep for about an hour. We pour the tea into a gallon jug, add cold water, and drink it. It’s easy enough.
Hey, I only drink unsweetened iced tea. Hot tea is not my cup of tea, okay? People ask me all the time if I drink sweetened tea. I guess it’s because I live in the South. I tell them, “Hey, I’m already sweet enough.”
I even had a guy at the Country Music Awards ask me, “Hey, what proof is that tea?” I told him, “Hey, zero proof. I don’t drink alcohol.” Everybody thinks there’s something else in my iced tea because I act funny, but that’s just me. I promise I drink unsweetened tea, Jack!
Hey, iced tea cools you off and makes you feel good. I’ve also found that tea can settle a lot of disputes. If our world leaders would sit down and have a glass of iced tea together, I think we’d live in a much better place.
When my nephews were younger, they were pretty competitive and were constantly at one another’s throats. It’s the way most teenagers are. One day, Jep told me that he was fighting with his brothers. “Every night, Willie and Jase come home in a bad mood,” he said. “They end up taking it out on me.”
“Hey, here’s what you do,” I said. “When you hear their truck pull up, make yourself a big glass of iced tea. Then take the biggest gulp you can take, but don’t swallow it until they go to bed.”
A couple of days later, I saw Jep and asked him if it worked.
“Yeah, I did exactly what you said to do,” he said. “I can’t believe it worked.”
“Hey, see what happens when you keep your mouth closed?” I said.
My iced-tea glass goes everywhere I go. It’s either half full or half empty, depending on how my day is going. I prefer my original iced-tea glass, the one my momma sent me. But I do have a few backups in case something goes wrong.
One day, I was eating at a barbecue restaurant in Texas when my tea glass started leaking. I looked at the bottom and saw a crack. Apparently, I’d cracked it while getting it out of the cup holder of my truck.
I told the waitress, “Hey, would you please bring me another glass? This one seems to be leaking.”
She looked at the cup in my hand and said, “Okay, what are you going to do with that one? Can I please have it?”
I signed the cup and gave it to her.
Another time, Christine’s cat Sweet Pea knocked my empty cup off a side table and started chasing it around the room. Then she used the cup to sharpen her claws. Somehow the cat clawed a hole right through my cup!
There was one guy who even tried to buy my original cup. He handed me a blank check and said, “Fill in the amount. Whatever it takes—I want that Tupperware cup.”
“Hey, it’s not for sale,” I told him.
The guy told me he’d give me six figures for the cup. I told him to go buy his own Tupperware cup, but he insisted he wanted mine. I told him the Duck Dynasty producers wouldn’t let me sell it—it even said so in my contract.
Hey, when I was walking into the infield for the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in April 2015, a security guard stopped me.
“Sir, we’re going to have to confiscate your tea jug and iced-tea glass,” he said. “You can’t have those in here.”
“Hey, you better call the president of the track,” I said. “This glass and this jug are not departing my hands.”
The guy got on his radio. A few minutes later, his cell phone rang. After a very short conversation, he hung up his phone.
“Mr. Robertson, have a nice day,” he said.
That’s what I’m talking about, Jack!