The Hardee’s Experience

I decided to visit my friend today, the one whose wife passed two days ago. I had stayed away because I knew there would be a lot going on at his house. He confirmed he had been very busy with visitors and phone calls—sometimes two phones ringing at the same time. His daughter was there and both said they were doing okay. I knew they were just putting on a brave face. That’s the American way of grieving—smile in public, dry your eyes in private.

Eventually the 7 o’clock hour arrived. The only food I had eaten all day was a 310 calorie “Korean-inspired beef” entrée. (Entrée: a French word meaning a meal in a box from a grocery store freezer.) It was time to take my leave and supplement my day’s caloric intake with some fast food.

I’ve blogged previously about going to Wendy’s at suppertime and finding myself the only customer there. This time I chose Hardee’s. When I walked in, there was one customer making a purchase, and her purchase was takeout. When she left, I had the place to myself. How do fast food franchises stay in business in this town? They must have one hell of a breakfast and lunch crowd.

“Are you always this busy?” I asked the young man behind the counter, but I could tell from his puzzled look that my wisecrack fell flat. Apparently they no longer teach sarcasm in school.

I ordered a bacon-cheese thickburger combo, which came with fries and a drink. The food was good—for fast food. The burger tasted flame-broiled, the small fries were plenty adequate, and the small drink was as large as a medium at another burger joint two blocks away. You can refill your drink, which I did. However, they balked at my refilling my french fries. “Hey, get away from those fries. You can’t be behind the counter, sir.”

So this is Hardee’s at suppertime on a Thursday. It’s located on the same road as the aforementioned Wendy’s, a road that carries combined traffic from U.S. routes 1 and 301 through my small city. So what is missing from these photos? Hint: what’s missing can be found at the McDonald’s just down the street.

Loss

A friend called about 10:30 this morning to tell me of his wife’s passing last night. What can one say? There are always mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s hard to lose a loved one, so his family had my sympathy. On the other hand, it can be a blessing to the one who is gone. That was true in this case. This lady had been suffering from a terminal illness for months and her quality of life was now zero. Sometimes it is a blessing to the caregivers as well, who must watch their loved one sink lower and lower into misery and pain. To have the final chapter come to a close must be a burden lifted from them.

I called my Skype friend in Costa Rica and told him of the lady’s passing. Though he knew the family only through conversations with me, he wanted me to extend his condolences to them. I said I would tell them.

Around 3:30 in the afternoon I was semi-napping on my bed when the skies grew dark and the heavens opened up with a torrent of rain. Rain roared noisily upon the copper sheet above my bedroom roof. A chill wind blew through my open bedroom window. Bursts of air swung the window blinds inward and back, inward and back. I lay on the bed and reflected on the visitors who must be trying to traverse from their cars to my friend’s front door. Could the day get more miserable?

After a while the rain settled into a moderate downpour that lasted for what seemed like several hours. I didn’t look at my clocks. Time has become fairly meaningless in my house.

Eventually I got up and I sat at my computer. Had it been a sunny day I would have driven to a store and bought a condolence card. But it wasn’t a sunny day and I didn’t want too much time to pass without saying something. So I composed a condolence email, which I admit must be the lowest form of correspondence yet invented by mankind. Still, I wanted to pass on my own original thoughts. After all, anyone can plunk down five bucks for an anonymous writer’s mass-produced Hallmark thoughts. So I told myself.

Soon enough my friend’s house will become quiet again. Time will pass and the stream of visitors will dwindle to a trickle. Then it will become an occasional visitor. Time will stretch into empty hours filled by the chatter of a television or the drone of an air conditioner. One becomes used to the empty hours piling one upon another until blending into empty days, empty weeks. There is a reason why I write blogs.

Perhaps one morning my friend will receive a phone call and a voice will say, “Let’s go to Mickey D’s and buy sausage biscuits for breakfast.” He and I are single geezers now. Breakfast at McDonald’s is the way of our people.

Starbucks Incident

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: Two black guys walk into a Starbucks…

But it’s no joke. Two men went into a Starbucks for a meeting, declined to purchase food or drink, and were therefore asked to leave. They refused to leave so police were called. They still refused to leave, so police arrested the men for trespassing. The restaurant did not press charges.

People everywhere condemned Starbucks. The two men ejected from the restaurant were lauded. ABC’s “Good Morning America” invited the men to appear on their broadcast to tell their story of being victims of racists at Starbucks.

I must be missing something here. What is wrong with expecting customers to make a purchase? What is wrong with asking people, black or white, to either buy something or leave? Businesses exist to make money. They make money when customers make a purchase. How entitled have people become when they think they have a right to occupy someone’s business without making a purchase?

When I sit in a restaurant, I expect to have to order something. If I were to refuse to order anything, I would expect a manager to appear and request that I place an order or leave. Why, then, do people make this incident about race? The men could have avoided this kerfuffle by buying a cup of coffee.

The men said they had been planning this meeting for months. If you want a place to meet and you don’t want to spend money, hold your meeting at the public library. There are rooms just for that purpose.

Meanwhile, Starbucks is retraining its employees.

Trust

Trust is a fragile thing. It’s not easily earned, and it’s very easily destroyed. I liken trust to a jewel. A jewel is a beautiful thing and is difficult to obtain. But place the jewel on an anvil and hit it just once with a heavy iron hammer and the jewel is destroyed. It can never be restored.

Speaking for myself, I must know someone a long time before I will give them my trust. I must know that they are trustworthy, and that is a quality that is slow to reveal itself. But that trust can be destroyed with two words. Imagine hearing this:

“Remember when I told you … (whatever)? I lied. The truth is … ”

Those two small words — “I lied” — are the words that destroy trust. If we accept that the speaker really did lie, then how can we believe the second version of the truth? Maybe it’s just another lie.

There is a saying: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” If you’ve been lied to once by someone, why would you trust them to not lie to you again? If someone admits to one lie, then why not two lies? Why not three lies? A person is honest or they’re not. A person is trustworthy or they’re not.

Perhaps it would be better to liken trust to a restaurant meal. Either there is spit in your food or there isn’t. There is no way that the words, “Yes, but it’s just a little spit,” can make it okay.

Food Questions

Just a few food questions I’ve wondered about:

• If sour cream gets too old, does it go sour? How would you know?
• What are french fries called in France? American fries?
• What is actually special about Special K?
• Why is it called peanut butter when it has no butter?
• Why is it called sweetbread when it is neither sweet nor bread?
• For that matter, headcheese...
• There is no chicken in it, so why is it called chicken-fried steak?
• There is no rabbit in it, so why is it called Welsh Rabbit? (Also spelled rarebit in an attempt to make the name less silly.)
• Why would someone name a fish Bombay Duck?
• There is a New Zealand dish made from lamb. It's called Colonial Goose. (Of course it is.)

I'm not even going to talk about Rocky Mountain Oysters, except to say there are no oysters in the Rocky Mountains. Buyer beware.

Asteroid In The News

I was perusing Google News when I saw this headline:

“Massive asteroid speeding near Earth”

It was concerning, but I was somewhat relieved by the words “speeding near Earth”. If the headline had read “speeding toward Earth” I would have been worried.

Then I read this headline:

“Asteroid Possibly Longer Than Football Field Will Soon Have Near-Earth Encounter”

It’s “longer than a football field.” But what kind of football field? Is it a field for European football (a.k.a. soccer) or American football? Why can’t headline writers be less ambiguous?

Then I wondered, how wide is this asteroid? Measured in football fields, of course. It may sound silly, but it wasn’t me who decided to denote asteroid size in football fields. I didn’t even know a football field is a unit of length.

The bigger question is why does Google present us with headlines about things that are not going to happen? I think I know why. There is so much bad news in the headlines that Google probably thinks it’s a good idea to publish a “we-dodged-a-bullet” headline occasionally to cheer us up. Like, “Good News: The Earth Won’t End Tomorrow” so pick up a six-pack while you’re out today and celebrate.

I’ll drink to that.

To Bathe or Not To Bathe

In the news today is this headline:

“Lawsuit: Nigerian woman kicked off United flight to SFO after white man complained about her smell”

Another black eye for United Airlines, whose reputation for customer service has not been helped lately by being in the news. The woman charges the airline with racial discrimination because she is black and the man who complained is white, so what else could it be but racism?

I can take an educated guess as to what else it might be. The airplane was flying from Houston to San Francisco, so it is safe to assume that most of the passengers were American. The “smelly” passenger was African.

It’s a fact that bathing customs vary around the world, according to the culture in that part of the world. In some African countries people don’t bathe every day and so to an American nose they may stink. Likewise, in some European countries people don’t bathe every day. The French are known for having body odor. A French doctor in Saint-Cloud says, “For many of us (French doctors), the deodorant spray is a tool of the trade at least as important as the stethoscope.” The doctor, practicing in one of the wealthiest Paris suburbs, complained he dealt with unwashed bodies every day of his life. Edouard Zarifian, an eminent French psychologist, said that for the French, “eating and drinking are natural functions. Washing is not.”

This is not meant to disparage the French (or any other culture) but only to point out that bathing customs vary from place to place. I once worked with a young man who was a Vietnamese refugee, and every day his garlicky body odor was enough to almost knock me down. I’m sure he smelled fine to his family. A friend who took classes in an international art school complained about Algerian students in his class who smelled like they had never bathed. I’ve read that in recent years Britons are smellier than the French, though that may have less to do with bathing than the fact that the French are Europe's biggest consumers of perfume and deodorants.

Maybe this event — getting “kicked off” a plane for being smelly — is not about race but about old-fashioned smelly body odor. Maybe the woman really did smell bad but, because she is from a very different culture, she didn’t know that she smelled bad to American noses. Not everything is about race. If you stink, I don’t want to sit beside you for several hours in a crowded metal tube with poor ventilation, regardless of your skin color. Just maybe, that is all this story is about.