Tang

As I'm getting ready for a Winter campout with my Boy Scouts, I've had interesting and strange memories of winter campouts when I was a Boy Scout.

The most recent memory is centered around hot tang.

My Scoutmaster knew how to camp in the winter.  He would bring along his white canvas army surplus tent.  In the roof of the tent was a metal collar for the stovepipe of his cast iron pot bellied stove.  He would stoke the fire and usually, he would have to open tent flaps to keep it from being too hot!

One morning, he prepared hot Tang to help those of us sleeping in regular dome tents without stoves to get warm.  Then he proceeded to pour the hot Tang into Dixie cold cups.

The taste of hot Tang, to me, will forever be coupled with the taste and feel of wax.  The hot tang instantly melted the thin layer of wax that used to (still does?) coat the inside and outside of the cold cups.

When the cups were finally cool enough to handle, I grabbed one and wrapped my fingers around it to warm them up and felt a strange sensation of wax hardening to my fingertips and to the palms of my hands.  There was a shiny slick of wax on top of the steaming orange drink.  After a few sips, the waxy taste seemed to go away, but it took longer for the waxiness to leave the roof of my mouth.

The taste of cold Tang brings me back to my grandma Smith's kitchen in the mid 1970's.  I LOVED to go to Grandma Smith's house because she usually had sugar cereal in the cupboard and she usually had a container of Tang that we would mix up (probably too strong) and drink with breakfast.  Trix and Tang... I don't know if I could handle that particular combination today, but as a child, I thought I had died and gone to sugar heaven.