6/17/05
Someone posted an internet poll about the best west coast burger chain. I was saddened to see that Carl’s Jr. weighed in with something like 2% of the vote. Way in the lead was In ‘n Out Burger. Now, without a doubt, In 'n Out is the best, but I cast my vote for Carl's simply because I have a lot of childhood fondness for it and I hate to see it lag so far behind.
When I was ten, my family moved to Southern California for a year. My father had his sabbatical, and we packed the clan into the specially modified Dodge Van - complete with chemical toilet – and camped our way to our new home, by way of Canada.
Now, the van toilet had a curtain around it, but given that I was the only boy, and I have four older sisters, you can believe me when I tell you that the toilet was only used once, and that in sheer desperation – by my stepsister, somewhere in the bathroomless wilds of Saskatchewan.
Anyway, when the trip ended, I was shocked and dismayed to discover myself in the California public school system for my fifth grade experience, and let me tell you: you’re better off releasing your children into the wild than allowing them to be educated in that school system.
For classroom exercises, we read M*A*S*H teleplays.
The other children refused to believe that me and my sisters were from New York State, because EVERYONE knows there’s no such place. When confronted with the question of where, exactly, they would locate New York City, most chose New Jersey (that, they’d heard of).
I spent a lot of time alone that year, unable to really connect with these people. Practicing my long jumps, far off in the corner of the school field, I did my longest jump yet – right into a large pile of dogshit. To top it off, there was no-one around to witness, so I walked the mile home from school fully smeared.
When I finally did make some friends, it was in the Cub Scouts, and my one experience at Scout Camp featured outhouses (we called ‘em biffys) with no toilet paper. No wiping material of any kind, for that matter. And having first relieved myself before discovering this fact, I grimly trekked the mile-and-a-half across the forest to where I knew there to be another set of biffys – and, upon discovering that they, too, were paperless, I finally resorted to wiping with a handful of pine needles, there being no real leaves to speak of.
You can’t say that I didn’t learn some survival skills in the Scouts.
You can imagine the shudder of recognition that went through me when we watched “Napoleon Dynamite” on DVD the other night…
About the only bright spot in my entire year in exile was the discovery of the California fast-food lifestyle. Taco Bell, Taco Time, Carl’s Jr., Wienerschnitzel, the list went on and on. Californians had somehow distilled the American Dream into the idea that you should be able to get drive-thru any time you wanted. And I was putting that dream into practice, even though I was only ten.
To my delight, the school cafeteria served Carl’s Jr. The mitigating factor to this was that I was a brown bag luncher, so while everyone around me got the burgers and fries, I had my dad’s baloney on Wonder with French’s yellow. Even still, I managed to put on 30 pounds by the time we moved back to New York a year later, just by bumming spare fries off of my friends with more understanding parents.
In August 1983, my family took a trip to Australia. On the way back from Sydney, we had a layover in L.A. My father and I went to get Carl's for the family, back at the motel, sometime well after midnight.
Apparently, the idea of a fast-food place open past midnight struck my Queens-bred father as odd. To make small talk (which he loves to do), my father asked the wispy white night manager what time they closed.
"Christmas!" said the manager - and his bright, toothy and wholly unironic smile of the unhinged suggested that he'd be working all 3,600 hours from then until closing.
When we resumed the flight to L.A. to home, we discovered our house had been robbed. By our next door neighbor, as it turned out.
There was a twenty-year pause before I had Carl’s again – this time on a business trip to Reno. I walked out of the hotel to pay a visit to Reno’s very, very scary urban sprawl, specifically with the goal in mind of reclaiming some of my youth with a visit to Carl’s.
A couple of years later, my wife and I did the Pacific Coast Highway, and I insisted that we stop at a Carl’s on the way.
You can imagine the shudder of recognition that went through me when we watched “Sideways” on DVD the other night...
Now I see that ass-queen Paris Hilton is writhing around in the cause of promoting Carl’s, and I feel it calling me again. I don’t suppose anyone out on the west coast wants to mail me a burger and fries? I’ll happily send you some real pizza in return.
-Dave
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Link: http://www.chriswichterman.com/music.htm. Another undersung genius, whipping up tales of love lost and catching waves. This time, he's from New Jersey. Follow the link to Chris's latest, "Among the Great Ones." You won't be disappointed.
Chris is also a great web-designer, and gives me a hard time about the site. (Folks, I desinged it to look lumpy. I like lumpy.)