Nobody could hold up the line at McDonald's like my brother! Our family would stop there for lunch on our semi-annual trip to Madison. It was only after suffering through our regular dental visits that we were treated to the extravagance of lunch at the new hamburger joint on Park Street.
We certainly earned our 19-cent burgers and 15-cent fries those days! We had endured the usual rigamarole in the dentist's chair and the interminable wait in the boring waiting room with the horrible "elevator" music. Good old Dr. Nania had presented each of us with the usual nickel or package of sugarless gum (nothing at all like we have now) and we would be on our way! I still wonder why I was always the one that also had to have a "little" cavity drilled and filled on the spot - sans novacaine! (It was probably better than scheduling a follow-up appointment, however, which I would have had to dread for weeks until it was over with.) All of it brings back horrible memories except the lunch at McDonald's!
We never ordered our own. We just waited in the car in happy expectation while our parents did the ordering. It was a big job, you see, and they had to handle it. We just waited in the car... and waited, and waited, and waited... I can imagine the conversation inside: "Oh, one of those six burgers has to be plain!" "No, no ketchup, no mustard, no pickle!" "No, I said no pickle! Now you have to start over... the pickle has touched the bun!" Screech! The assembly line ground to a halt while someone figured out how to make a McDonald's hamburger that was "p-l-a-i-n"! while we waited in the car...
Today I think I will have my burger and fries at Burger King where a person can have it their way. "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us." By the way, Happy Burger and Fries day in honor of my Big Brother's Birthday! Make mine plain, please, just like his! He would have been 64!
