He would typically get started early in the morning and pull up on our graveled driveway, blow the horn of his old International pickup and I would come running outside. He wanted to get an early start, to beat the heat. And so, on this day, we started early, driving the backroads of Stark county, looking for discarded metal along the highway. And when the bed of the truck was finally filled, we took our day’s work to the salvage yard, had it weighed. We didn’t make a lot, but the extra money helped him with his bills.
We finished just before noon. When I saw him take the money from the scrap yard operator, I quickly reached behind his seat for the lunch pail. I moved my hand about and couldn’t find it anywhere. We had a routine. And lunch was always part of it. Bologna sandwiches, slightly warmed from the sun along with an orange soda to wash it down. When he reached the truck, he smiled and asked, ”What are you doing?”
“I can’t find the lunch pail,” I answered.
He laughed and said, “I figured we do something different today for lunch. I hear there is this place that opened over in Canton, that sells hamburgers for fifteen cents. We’re not too far away from it, so I thought maybe we’d go over and have a hamburger and milk shake.”
I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I had never thought of the possibility of having a hamburger that my mother didn’t cook. Of course, I was only nine and the extent of my worldly experience pretty much centered around my small neighborhood, rural routes collecting metal, and what little else I could see from the passenger’s window of the International Harvester. The thought of having a meal in any place other than the house or the cab of the pickup was totally foreign to me. It didn’t take me long to smile and say, “Sure.” Afterall, I was just a kid and this was yet another adventure.
Fast Food For The First Time!
We pulled away from the scrap heap and headed down the road. It didn’t take us long to get to where we were going. There were cars everywhere and people moving about. Apparently people were loving this hamburger place. And the building – well, I’d never seen quite a structure – it looked like something out of a science fiction movie. It had a slanted roof and adorning both sides were to large, yellow arches. In fact, in front of the restaurant was an even larger arch that sported a little character atop of it holding a sign that advertised the price of the burgers, and below him, a larger sign that announced we had arrived in the world of fast food.
He didn’t read, so I jumped out of the truck and headed to the window. I needed to see the offerings first, and then fill him in before he got to the window, where he would order. “So, what do you like?” he asked me as I came back over to him.
“I think I want to try that cheeseburger and fries. And of course a milk shake. Vanilla.”
“Then I’ll have the same thing,” he said and approached the window and ordered. Once he paid, I thought we were in for a wait, so I suggested we sit in the truck.
“I reckon we could do that,” he started, “but everyone is talking about how fast they prepare the food, so I’m hoping it will be here in a snap.” And in what seemed like an instant, they handed him a bag and our two shakes. I nearly fell to the asphalt, stunned from what I had just witnessed. It took my mother a good fifteen minutes to prepare and cook a burger at home. Longer, if we wanted fries. And here, in a matter of minutes, our food was in front of us.
It Wasn’t the Fast Food That Made The Difference!
And so, on that hot summer day I got to enjoy my first visit to a fast food restaurant. And while I thought that no burger, or fries, could be as tasty as what I had eaten, I realized with time, it wasn’t the food that made the difference, it was him.
I didn’t get to eat many burgers with him because in less than a year after my first visit, God saw fit to call him home. But I will always have that day that he eschewed the bologna sandwiches to introduce me to the world of fast food.
And today – though my waistline can hardly handle many more of those visits- on those rare occasions when I do frequent a fast food restaurant, I can almost feel him, standing next to me, his hand on my shoulder, and asking, “So what do you like?” You see, it never was about the food.
