...he'd be your local (insert eatery of your choice) burger joint, SK's. In your town of 5,000-10,000, EVERYONE knows SK's is the place to eat. It's by far the best burger joint in town. There is never a line, but it's ALWAYS packed. The green chile cheeseburger is their speciality. The cheese is always dripping and colluding the burger to the roasted green chile (roasted just right so it melts in your mouth) and the perfect amount of mayonnaise holds the burger together. It is SO good! You rave about it to your family back home. You meet your friends there to eat on a regular basis. When people from the adjoining county want a burger, they drive to SK's. Yes, once a month or so, you get a burger that's undercooked or overdone, but the rest of the month more than makes up for it. You keep asking Diners, Drive-In's and Dives to come, but you know it's a long shot.
Then your uncle comes to visit from the big city, and you're so proud of SK's you take him there the first night he's in town. And he orders...the grilled chicken burger... The grilled chicken burger??? You're astounded. If he wanted a burger off the beaten path you'd have recommended the Cali Club Burger, not everyone orders it, but it's still damn good, but the grilled chicken??? And he's not impressed. He says it's dry and boring, and after you leave SK's he spots McDanBrown's on the way to your house and he begs you to stop by so he can get a BigDB. You totally don't want to go there, your local friends will laugh at you. Yeah, you've eaten it in a pinch, but the prefabricated burgers with their tiny chapters, and their easy to digest words and story, they just don't sit well after you've been chomping on a green chile cheeseburger from SK's, but he's your uncle and you still want him to be proud of your town. You're not opposed to McDanBrown's, in fact, you're happy it's in your town from an economic standpoint because it pulls people off the interstate, so you drive through, and you order for your uncle. You don't look the clerk in the eye when you get your food, but it's okay, cause they probably don't know you anyways. Your uncle starts chowing down and you look over at him. He winks at you and through a mouth full of BigDB mumbles, "Nwfph, that's whfmpht I callft a burgerssss." You can't stop thinking about your green chili cheeseburger though, and the chocolate malt you had earlier, like a good malt, old school like you can't get these days. Your uncle goes home the next day.
Then two weeks later you visit him in the big city. He want's to show off, so you go to a trendy diner downtown called Brett E. E.'s. The food is delicious, so tasty, you love it, but your tummy doesn't. It's too rich for your digestive system and you spend the rest of the night in the restroom (craving the green chili cheeseburger from SK's). The next day, he takes you to Patterson's Casual Cafe. You have the buffalo chicken salad. It's good...no SK's, and by the end of the meal you start wondering if you'd imagined how great it'd tasted when you started eating it, but it's good. Then he takes you to Koontz Bar and Grille. You order one of their green chile cheeseburgers, and OF COURSE, you're disappointed. The green chile is slightly under-roasted, the cheese is not quite melted right and fries are kind of dry, not to mention chocolate concoction they call a "malt." You kind of wish you'd ordered the chili, supposedly it was an award winner in Terlingua thirty years earlier, but you didn't see anyone eating it, so you went with the crowd. You beg off another day of visitation with your uncle. You politely tell him you enjoyed all the places he took you to eat. You go home...
...and immediately upon getting there you go to SK's for a green chili cheeseburger, because it's so damned good!!!
That's why people read Stephen King.
- Alan Nicholas
Attorney, Avid reader, sometime writer (as a hobby)
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