I ate at McDonald’s for the first time in years today. Of course, people who know my eating habits will undoubtedly realize that there must be some sort of backstory here. I generally hate McDonald’s, although this was not always the case. Back in my early days in Los Angeles, the Golden Arches was a staple of my post-collegiate diet, since fast food was all that I could afford. I would go on regular drive-thru benders, fueled by dollar menus and the need for cheap calories.
I have memories of being especially destitute, writing embarrassingly bad screenplays, and scrounging all of my loose change on Wednesdays, when the McDonald’s near Wilshire and Bundy would offer 29-cent cheeseburgers. I would take home a dozen or so, refrigerate them, and microwave them in my West LA studio apartment throughout the day. As revolting as this practice sounds, it was my weekly ritual (this same McDonald’s would also offer the Super Scoop, a 32-oz cup filled with fries).
Ultimately, things improved for me once I stopped writing. I was lucky enough to have made some connections in the entertainment industry, and once I got swept up in the dot-com boom, my long work weeks did not allow much time for screenplays. Plus, the frustration of writing abysmal scripts had finally worn me down — I just didn’t have the chops to make a career of it. To be sure, my over-funded dot-com salary ensured that my weekly sojourns to McDonald’s would soon become a thing of the past.
Of course, my change in eating habits was more of a factor of economy than enlightenment. I was still putting away lots of burgers — just better ones. I was taking long lunches at Carney’s on Sunset Boulevard, which I will defend to this day as the absolute quintessential chili-cheeseburger (anywhere). Somehow along the way, without necessarily trying, I had successfully phased out fast food. It wasn’t until much later, when I was in culinary school, that I realized how important this decision was.
These days, it has become increasingly easy to side against corporate fast food. In particular, many recent arguments against McDonald’s have been issued, whether it’s Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation,” Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me,” or the efforts of Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food movement or Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard program. There are times when I get so disillusioned with American eating habits that I feel like I need to make nutritional awareness my life’s work. I feel pity on the people who eat fries and a Coke with every meal.
Which brings me back to my original point: why, exactly, did I inhale a Sausage McMuffin with Egg with that so-called “hash brown” this morning? It’s simple, really: I had spent the previous night at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, after being fed crummy little bags of airline pretzels, while my flight was being diverted all over the Lone Star State. Sometime while being parked on a San Antonio runway for refueling, I had missed my connector back to the Bay Area, and the Dallas airport (including its eateries) was already closed down by the time the plane finally arrived.
Sleeping in a public place is always a little shameful, even if the terminal did look like a refugee camp last night. I certainly wasn’t the only one who had been stranded, but what comfort is a room full of strangers, anyway? For me, time spent in airports is pretty much the opposite of vacation, which is the great irony of traveling internationally — when you have to deal with the airlines, there is a good chance that it can all go to hell at any time. I woke up dazed, confused, unrested, and maybe still a little hung-over from a week’s worth of Belizean rum. Most of all, I was famished from not really eating for the last 18 hours. For better or worse, the airport McDonald’s was close by — I could smell it from across the terminal.
My breakfast was salty, fatty and familiar. I scarfed it down, and ended up gnawing that fluorescent yellow cheese off of the wax paper, an instinctive move from my younger days. I realize that portrays a rather crude picture — very ungourmand of me, I know — but after spending the night using my dirty beach-worn clothes for a pillow, I had no real sense of dignity. Plus, I still wasn’t even halfway home. I contemplated another trip through the breakfast line, as I could’ve easily eaten that meal all over again.
Instead, I stuffed my bag of ravaged McDonald’s wrappers into a trash can that — even at six o’clock in the morning — was already brimming with more of the same. I had been desperate, yet I was fairly certain that those before me had simply been following their regular routine. Welcome to America.
I think airport McDonald’s tastes better than regular McDonald’s, personally. (Not that I want to admit to eating much regular McDonald’s.)
To this day, whenever I have a long drive ahead of me of several hours, I’ll stop for their french-fries…