Monday, July 4, 2011.
The Annual Pure American Meal.
I am taking the day off. I didn't publish a newsletter or do a radio show. One person complained, but I say if the Wall Street Journal can skip its Fourth of July edition, so can I. As for the radio show, I know from twenty years of experience that not enough people are listening for a conversation to begin.
I am home alone, filling the day with miscellaneous tasks. There's about a year's worth of these at all times--and that's without even leaving my little office.
One of these jobs generated today's recovery milestone. I was autographing and mailing books. The orders are coming in at an accelerated pace lately. (Which reminds me: Hey, "Woodman"! Remember how you posted a year ago on Amazon, after not reading Hungry Town, that it would be on the clearance table "in about twenty seconds"? Well, third printing, baby! I know you read this every day, so, hah!)
Anyway, I had to open another carton of Hungry Towns. But it was underneath a carton of my cookbooks. That weighs about forty pounds. I have not attempted to pick up something so heavy since breaking my leg. Absent-mindedly, I just went ahead and did, catching myself in the act when it was too late to do anything about it. But: no pain, no problem.
Emboldened by that, I left the cane in the car when I went out to lunch. First time I've attempted that.
Lunch was my annual visit to McDonald's. On a Fourth of July back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, en route to nowhere in particular, I stopped for lunch at the McDonald's in Covington. I remember thinking then that the cheeseburger is the most American of meals--at least as measured by the number of them we eat. Most Independence days since then, I've indulged in a McDonald's cheeseburger, the only one I eat all year.
I would not have guessed then that this same McDonald's would become to one closest to home. It's in need of renovation--one booth bench has had the same tear in its upholstery for the last several years. But the staff is inattentive. On the other hand, the food is tepid.
My method for getting a good burger out of McDonald's doesn't work anymore. I'd order a double cheeseburger with several variations from the standard: no ketchup, extra onions, extra pickles, extra mustard. Used to be they'd have to grill that from scratch. I don't know what they do now, but it had that sitting-in-the-warmer-for-awhile quality I was trying to avoid. Oh, well. I wasn't expecting brilliance. It was certainly better than the awful new Angus burger I had here a year ago.
One improvement: the television in the dining room was off. Last year, it put the sneering face of Bill O'Reilly in mine.
Meanwhile, in Florida, the Marys spent the day driving all the way down to Key West. At the end of US 1--the southernmost point of the contiguous forty-eight states--they had to wait in line so they could take their picture in front of the identifying marker. MA said that the main drag of Duval Street reminded them a lot of Bourbon Street, including the sweltering weather. The Marys hate Bourbon Street.
They returned to the Rug Rat Inn, midway up the Keys, fighting tremendous traffic. What did they expect on the Fourth of July? Once again, I mentally thanked them for not inviting me on this crazy tour.
