Eatin' my way down 17A

He was a scruffy little fellow of about nine-years- old with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his faded tattered jeans.  I watched from my seat as the t-shirt clad lad looked at the coins in his hands and moved slowly to the counter where orders are placed.  "How much is a hamburger?" he timidly asked the teenage girl behind the counter.

"$3.80," she said in a bored voice.

As he shuffled his feet he counted the coins and crumpled bill on the counter. With bowed head he began to remove the money from the counter.
Then,  I heard a voice from the seat nearby, "Wait a minute, I'll help you get a hamburger!" I looked to see an elderly woman in an old coat reaching out with a bony hand holding a couple of bills. Her close cropped white hair contrasted with her mahogany face which was etched with the lines of time. But there was a warmth about her as gave the bills to the boy.

"What a wonderful thing to do." commented Claudette as she munched a french fry.  I nodded and took a look at my lunch.  We were at the Tastee Freeze across from Summerville High School and enjoying what is probably our favorite junk food treat: foot-long hot dogs and ice cream.  The restaurant has been there since 1969 and continues today to serve up hot dogs, burgers, and fries, plus ice cream treats.  We prefer the foot-long combo.  That is a foot-long hot dog with fries and a soft drink.  I get my dog with chili, onions, mustard and catsup.  We really like the fries; thin and very crispy much like the frites we had in France. Eating a foot-long can be a problem.  Claudette and I differ in our preferred technique.  She always divides hers into two pieces.  I guess this is the female method and perhaps the proper etiquette. For me the first decision I must make is how to remove the dog from its colorful paper wrapper. It is an envelope actually, unlike that absorbent paper they use at ballparks. My technique is to gently, so as not to disturb meaty morsels, tear the paper exposing the king of the unbarking dogs.. I don't break it in half.  Part of the experience of eating a foot-long is handling the eating of it without dumping the chili and mustard all over the table before finishing. The wiener toppings seem to be attracted particularly to white t-shirts. There are few decisions to make about our entre here, but we usually have to give some thought to desert. After much thought we decided on Nutter Butter blizzards. The blizzards were vanilla ice cream blended with Nutter Butter cookies. There are not enough positive adjectives in the English language to properly describe this cold confection.

On the way home we relived our annual  experience.