Thick and Flat

"Pennsylvania?" asked the woman next to me in line at McDonalds this morning. We were in a tiny North Carolina town fueling up for our road trip home from the beach.

I thought she meant the grape jelly I had just requested to go with Heidi's sausage biscuit, so I shook my head and pointed at the wife. "Nope, Buffalo, NY."

"Oh," the other woman sighed, "your voice sounded a lot like my aunt's, and she's from Pennsylvania." Her own voice had a thick Carolina drawl.

I shrugged and smiled, unwilling to take the time to correct our miscommunication. "Have a good one," I told her as I grabbed the bag and headed back to the car. 

Later as we drove north, I pondered her question and just what she might have heard in my voice that suggested Pennsylvania. Like most people, I consider my speech to be completely unaccented. Having lived in many different places probably supports the illusion, since I am unable to point to a single place that I am "from." A few years ago, I took a quiz in the NYTimes that was supposed to detect how my speech reveals where I am from, but the results were inconclusive.

Interestingly enough, I did spend some formative years right across the Delaware River from Pennsylvania, but I don't hear either Philly or South Jersey in my voice, probably because we didn't spend enough time there.

Even so, some things stick from those days. Yesterday when we were at lunch, the sodas we ordered came flat. For my seltzer, it wasn't a big deal, but my brother's cola was another story. "It tastes like, what was the name of that stuff people used to serve in New Jersey?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," I grimaced, "that cola-flavored syrup that they used to mix with water? I hated that stuff!"

"Me, too," he agreed, and we spent the next few minutes searching our memories and our phones for the name of it. 

Takaboost, or now, simply Boost!, was and is a hyper-local phenomenon, manufactured and primarily consumed in Burlington County, New Jersey, where we lived at the time. According to the press, it is either A flat, thick,weird-tasting soda you'll only find in New Jersey or This NJ-made drink tastes like flat Coke and we can't get enough of it.

Right! Just add wooter.