MS-150 Chronicles, Part Three

SATURDAY, April 16, 2011

Saturday Dark Thirty in the morn, and about now, 13,000 Riders (or thereabouts) are lined up at various staging points in West Houston, Katy and scores of other points in between to start the MS150 ride to Austin. Meanwhile, I head out before sunrise on the last leg to a work assignment in Chicago in possession of a large coffee, hash browns and a Jack-In-The-Box Sourdough breakfast sandwich, basically an Egg McMuffin on steroids and on sourdough bread. Served all day. I will never eat McDonalds again if there's a Jack-in-the-box in the neighborhood. I had actually given up on McDonalds some months back, and as I roll down the road, I wonder how they survive at all.

There's a variety of reasons to abhor McDonalds. It's not just their unchanging, Stalinesque menu, or their measly portions, or a nitwit staff that gets the order wrong 50% of the time, or $2.29 for a glass of orange juice from concentrate, or even the rampant hiring of Illegal Immigrants right under the noses of ICE and the Justice Department. The number one reason not to patronize McDonalds? We'll get to that in a second. In the meantime, I thought I would share some honest-to-god conversations I have had with McDonalds' personnel in the past four months, from all four borders of this great nation, and generally speaking through the drive-through window:

- “You got my order wrong, you got my two partner's orders wrong. No, we didn't switch bags. None of us have what we ordered.”
- “I asked for ketchup, salt and pepper. You didn't give me any.”
- “OK, can I get more than one ketchup, one salt, and one pepper?”
- “What do you mean, your 'jefe no está aquí'? I don't know what that means, but I'm pretty sure it's not taking care of my problem.”
- “I asked for three creams and three sugars on the side. You put them in my coffee.”
- “Look, my bill is six dollars and 41 cents. I gave you eleven dollars and 41 cents. All you need to do is give me a five dollar bill in change.”
- “You just handed me my order; my hamburger is cold. How is that even possible?”
- “What part of 'don't put any whipped cream in my milk shake' did you not understand?”

All the other hassles aside, what is worst about McDonalds is their policy of not serving you breakfast after 11am (10am in some markets). Pull up to the drive-through station at 11:01, and you are made to feel like an idiot for not bothering to have checked your watch beforehand, all the more galling inasmuch as the message is delivered by somebody who can't make change in their head and requires pictures on the register to tally your order. McDonalds is as full of themselves as Microsoft was, say, back in the 90s when they thought they could do no wrong while simultaneously providing crap product, their Mission Statement based on the premise that their customers are cattle and must be controlled.

More or less the operating premise of the Democrat Party.

I continue to push North to St. Louis and start to look for the interesting little towns that dot America like so many exclamation marks. I'm not disappointed, soon crossing Lebanon, St. James and Cuba. I zip through St. Louis, hit the Illinois state line, and in my path lay Mt. Olive, Divernon and Farmersville on my way to Springfield, IL, Abraham Lincoln's home. More about America's third most popular president later.

Settling in for a long, fairly boring stretch through Illinois, I start messing with my GPS, a reliable source of entertainment when neither satellite radio or the countryside offers any. For example, you can amuse yourself by doing a GPS search for Food, and it will offer you different categories: Mexican, Italian, American, French, German, Fast Food, etc. There's even a search option for "British Isles". Seriously? The mind boggles as to what British delicacies one might find in one's travels through America: Bangers and Mash, Shepherd's Pie; Corned Beef and Cabbage, Boxty, Haggis, Black Pudding, Lobscouse & Spotted Dog......

How to explain the Brits' lack of concern about the stuff that they eat and the near retardation of the British palate since their earliest days? My theory is that Her Majesty's subjects simply had other priorities. See, the Empire had to devote so much in terms of resources to the Admiralty and the Trading Companies so as to maintain their world domination, that there was nothing left to devote to the finer virtues, such as cooking, the arts, and music. So, the French did the cooking, the Italians did the Art, and the Germans did the music. Sadly, a century ago, America took over dominion of the world, whilst British cooking continued its long stagnation.

Says the guy who lives in the country that gave the world McDonalds.

The skies cleared some in the morning. I was up just prior to first light, and after a couple of cups of coffee I stepped outside with the dregs of my cup and a fresh ciggie. My room was on the lee side of dawn, but that was no big loss, as the Early sky was a uniform grayish white mass almost totally lacking in the texture you expect from clouds. By mid-morn the mass to the West had divided itself into some righteous clusters, while the bulk to the East and overhead remained an amorphous blob. The result as the sun rose was sunlight that didn't hit the ground, but did increasingly illuminate the clouds to the West as it sifted right to left. The effect was cool. Darkness to the right, a riot of activity overhead, and clear almost laser-beam like rays populating the skies to the West. This could only mean that the amorphous blob couldn't have been so terribly high as to block the sun from its cousins, particularly in the early portion of sunrise. The effect was interesting and again, something of a novelty.

You see so much more of weather when you're driving.

I roll out from the Motel and head north. As if on cue the clouds all draw back together and once again, steady rain comes down. This is nothing like the Tornadic conditions of the day before and this rain falls straight from the sky, spreading itself evenly across my windshield, each droplet exactly the same size. I set the stroke on my intermittent wipers, and I don't need to change it for the next hour.

As I drive, I'll also mix things up by changing the language on the GPS from British Isles to, say, German. You just haven't lived until you've heard that female German GPS voice – I call her Helga - command you to "Rechts Abbiegen!", or inform you that you are “Ankunft am Bestimmungsort!”. You can almost picture Helga in spiked heels, leather and fishnet stockings, a whip in her right hand, a peaked SS Officer's hat framing her blonde locks, lipstick as red as blood. Suffice to say, while German is not the language of love, it is arguably the language of S&M. It gives me some insight into ze Germans. “Helga, Paddel mein Hintern!”.

I try not to dwell on ze Verführerin and shift my focus to other things. To honor the impending nuptials of Prince William and Kate, I reprogram the voice on my GPS to “English”. The voice is of course female, but with none of the complexity of Helga. I name her Fanny, and contemplate the sheer triviality of my GPS including an English accented voice in its repertoire. Speaking of the Royal Wedding, I'm amazed at Americans' continuing fascination with the royal family. Thomas Paine must be rolling in his grave, if not spinning like a centrifuge, but my overall impression is that the institution, while mostly harmless, is hardly blameless.

One need only look at the serial embarrassments of the current British royal family to sense the urgent need for change: the inbred homeliness, the infidelity, the murderous intrigue, the Oedipus Complex. And that's just Prince Charles. Not that he hasn't been provoked into a lot of his bad behavior. The deal he had with his mother was that if he married Diana and produced heirs, that she would surrender the crown to him. Then she went and Welshed on the deal (pun intended), and now Prince Charles approaches his dotage, less likely than ever to be addressed as King Charles. What to make of all this?

I have a theory. I believe that Queen Elizabeth – belying her kindly persona – has decided that she likes being Queen too much to surrender it to anybody, and as time goes on and her mental faculties dwindle, her hold on the throne has become ever-more vise like. The only question is: has she always been like this, or did she get like this over time? My money is on the former. Monarchy has always been a pretty cut-throat business, as the process of Succession in Britain has proven over the centuries. Think Henry the Eight, for example. But the current state of affairs may provide an opportunity for the very fundamental change necessary to rejuvenate the Crown, and what better way for that to occur than a good old fashioned Coup? Queen Elizabeth needs to be overthrown. Further, I think Prince Charles thinks he's just the man to do it. In his idle moments – which are many - don't tell me he doesn't have this checklist running through his head:

- Finance improvements for the Tower of London.
- Declare Self the Pope of the Anglican Church.
- Imprison Mother and other family members as necessary.
- Ascend to the throne.
- Banishment and executions as necessary.

But that it were true. Can you even imagine the royalties on that reality TV show?

As I drive out of Springfield, IL, I pass Atlanta, Normal and Pontiac on my way to Joliet, just outside of Chicago. I'm just about there when the ZZ Top classic "Jesus Just Left Chicago" comes on the radio. Spooky. Not that I have a Jesus complex, but having just visited Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield, IL on the heels of my extended meditation about royalty, I'm struck by the other ways that Americans celebrate royalty, in this case, Abraham Lincoln. Earlier in the day I had stopped into the Abraham Lincoln Residential museum, as worshipful a shrine as one could imagine, and staffed with about a dozen of Forest Service guides, all equally as worshipful of Honest Abe. Left to nobody's influence other than theirs, I would conclude that Lincoln was, if not Jesus Christ reincarnated, at least worthy of a regard not generally due to mere mortals.

Dressed in their Forest Service parkas, the Guides would shepherd groups of twenty through the Lincoln residence. The tour was informative and fun, but the reverence was palpable, so much so that our Guide failed to remark at all on the Lincoln Outhouse, which consisted of one stall and three stools, with the middle stool a mini-throne compared to the other two. It occurred to me that the only reason to have one stall but three stools is that those three would on occasion be used simultaneously. The mind boggled at the possibilities: family-time? business meetings? And why not three different stalls? It's not like he lacked the funds.

Not wanting to be a buzz-kill, I keep my questions to myself, but take pictures for posterity's sake.

Now, average Folk in America don't much cotton to deification, are not prone to hyperbole, and generally disdain the elevation of any person much above anybody else. But that is not to say that there is not a segment of society that does not devote itself to such notions, and these folks are generally are in the employ of the federal government, and inclined to ascribe to other government employees such as Lincoln a stature that allows them to sustain their own sense of self-worth. And so it was that I was forced to endure a battalion of Lincoln worshipers in the near proximity of his home, not to mention my trajectory towards Chicago.

The Visitor's Center was my first clue. Lincoln mugs, Lincoln key chains, Lincoln coasters, Lincoln frig magnets – a vast trove of Lincoln plunder in the gift shop. Next to the 1/64th scale recreation of Springfield were statues of his head and hands cast from plaster impressions taken some time during his presidency. Next to them was a sign inviting visitors to touch the Great Man's head and hands. I wander over to the library section, and wonder whether or not Abe in the Afterlife was chagrined by the – count them – fifteen thousand books written about him in the wake of the Civil War, much less any invitation to fondle his extremities?

There is a school of thought that says that Old Abe brought much of the hero worship Vibe upon himself. This was the guy who stood for having his head encased in plaster, after all, and as History has recorded, was more than inclined to the Florid and Self-Sacrificial Speech. Lincoln was prone to agonize, publicly and privately, over his every decision and its import, with all of it methodically recorded for posterity. And is it just me, or was Abe Lincoln cognizant of the fact that even his private utterances, whether recorded by himself or others, would eventually be revealed - and in just the right sequence - so as ensure his place in history?

Me, I think old Abe has a few things to answer for in that regard, but is otherwise OK. I rank him third on our list of Presidents behind Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge, both of whom I hold in high regard for their modesty and lack of concern for their legacy, traits shared by only a few other American presidents.

I do a search on the GPS for Fast Food and there's an address for The Gyro Shack in Joliet. Score. Ten minutes later, I'm walking into a cramped little, well, shack: counter seating for - I kid you not - three. Trying to make my Daddy proud, I have made a point of pronouncing "Gyro" correctly. Since our earliest trips to Greektown in Detroit, he would admonish me to pronounce it "Yeer-oh, with the emphasis on the first syllable. Don't disrespect these guys by pronouncing it any other way". We would then be served one of the best things you could ever eat, shaved pieces of lamb heaped on a puffy flat bread and dressed with onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and sour cream sauce.

"I'll have a Yeer-oh sandwich with fries", I says. "OK" says the burly counter guy, in classic Chicago-ese, "what kind of Pop you want with that Jeer-oh?" You can't make this stuff up. Two minutes later I've got a Gyro the size of a small fireplace log, fries and Pop, in this case a diet Pepsi. Total: $6.40. I had also asked him for some extra sour cream on the side. He said, "trust me, you won't want any sauce on the side"; he was right. My Gyro was laden with the stuff, oozing out of the sides, making a happy mess on my fingers and dripping onto the wrapper.

I read the Chicago Tribune as I eat, watch a hockey game on the TV and shoot the breeze with the guy to my left, who is also eating a Gyro, reading a paper, watching hockey and talking to a complete stranger to his right, standing up at the counter built for three patrons. I contemplate the Quantum inferences until I realize that this guy, inexplicably, has a side of extra sour cream sauce.

Minutes later, I'm out of there with the uneaten half of my Gyro stored in the cooler. I head slightly East and start looking for a motel. By this time, the MS150 Riders are all in to LaGrange. I wonder how things are going, and if even Heartache's tent at Schlumberger could possibly be serving anything better than a Joliet Gyro.