Don't tell anyone, but I've eaten there...
--The confessions of a sausage-egg McMuffin maniac--

Back when I drove cab, I would begin the day with two of the above-mentioned breakfast sandwiches, and sometimes I'd add a little pre-formed patty of hashbrowns...or two...and, of course, some Seattle's Best...so you can wash down your prefabricated food with a splash o'Joe, and tell yourself that if the food isn't any good, well, at least the coffee is. I don't have 'em much anymore, but I have to admit here and now that I am a sucker for sausage-egg McMuffins. That sausage is so doggone good, I'm close to salivating on my keyboard and shorting it out, just thinking of that darned breakfast sandwich.

I've bought McDonalds' hamburgers; when you eat one of those, you put something in your stomach, but that doesn't do an awful lot except increase your cholesterol count. And the burgers have taste, but I'm not sure what I'm tasting. Not caring about that, I'd find myself in a rush, tired after a long hard day, so tired I was virtually catatonic, with only enough energy left to get out of my car, open my front door and fall on the couch. So in a situation like that, I'd ration my energy by heading for the nearest drive-thru window. "Two burgers and a shake", I'd bark into the virtually unintelligible speaker system, then I'd zip around to the window, pick up my stuff (well, it probably really isn't FOOD), and head for home.

I would surmise that if a survey was taken of customers who ate at fast-food places, I'd bet 70% of the customers go there because they're in a hurry, they're late, they're dead tired, or they have a bunch of screaming savage little spoiled brats, and the best way to shut them up is to stuff a burger in their rabid mouths. The main reason the 70% of customers go to fast food joints? To be able to shove something, anything, down their gullet in rapid-fire machine-gun fashion. The other 30% might actually go there for the FOOD itself. Maybe. I'll have to research that one.

Another thing...have you ever noticed that in the commercials, all the McDonalds' clerks are so happy, so preppie, so yuppie...I don't know about you, but in every McDonalds' I've seen, the manager is screaming, all the workers are moving frantically in all directions, and the counter people are in such a great big hurry they virtually throw the food AT you. The potato fryer is spitting out grease, beef-patties roll out of the ovens in best assembly-line style, and usually 2 or 3 of the varieties of soft drink are "out" for the moment until someone puts in a new tank of carbonized sugar-injected liquid drink fizz. Or, there's no coffee and you have to wait for 'em to make a fresh pot.

While all this is going on up front, the kids are back there in the McJungle playground, falling off things and killing themselves. And the parents sit at tables, watching their little ones raise all kinds of hell. The parents are so tired, so beat, so mentally ravaged that all they can do is stuff another burger into their yaps. That's kind-0f a portrayal of society in microcosm, ain't it? McDonalds' (and its competitors) do come in handy. They enable us to shoot something down the ol' esophagus so we can fight the distraction of hunger for a while. But is it "food"? Food is supposed to nourish, right? So my answer is, "I honestly don't know."

But, every town has 'em...a strip of burger and sandwich joints all up and down the main drag, screaming to all passersby with their big, loud, gaudy, instantly-recognizable trademarks. And I'll tell ya, it's a jungle out there...big corporations everywhere, stumbling all over themselves, trying to sell as many almost-artificial food items as they can. Well, let's hope that it doesn't come to THIS...


When I got this foto from www.spokesmanreview/blogs/hbo, they didn't ask, "do you want fries with that?"