McDiner

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Either, folks, it's me number one ninety seven. That's my
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identity here today, one ninety seven. But I am a man,
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a free man, not a number. And who is number one?
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You are number one ninety seven. Sorry, I'm getting off
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on a tangent there. I'm number one ninety seven because
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I'm not at the diner. Because I've been saying to
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you for the last a few weeks. The diner is closed.
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It's going through a break to break in the main
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and consequently can't get in drive by from time to time.
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Still dark. I see people to the back digging, but
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I see no sign of progress. You think it would
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be done, but something has changed and I don't like it.
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But here we are at McDonald's. So I got to
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go to a different place every week. Now that I've
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decided that, you know, I've got to branch out. I
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gotta see new things. I got to expand my life
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since they can't go back. And you know, it's been
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a while since I've actually sat down in a McDonald's
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and done the McDonald's experience. It's a charmless, soul emptying
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carbohydrate and protein consumption box. I mean, there is somebody
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the counter who will take your order if you must.
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But if you're a modern person, of course you stride
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right up to that big display and start touching the
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things that all the other people have touched now for
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a long time pre COVID in any place like a
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public restaurant or something like that, I sort of instinctively,
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if it's the fall or winter or spring, tuck my
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jacket sleeve around my hand when I opened up a building,
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because you never know who has touched that. Well, you
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do know other people, other germy people, And while I'm
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not a germophobe, I know that it's probably unwise during
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peak cold and flu season to go grabbing public surfaces
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and then doubtlessly shoving your finger in your nose or
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eye or ear or someplace where the disease will catch.
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So the idea of walking up to one of these
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things and using my finger, which I will then use
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to pull fries out of a little sli, no, So
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you learn the knuckle tap. You learn how to with
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your knuckle on the various things, and that's how you
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make your order. I didn't want to go to the
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countertop today because I'm not in a particularly I've had
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bad experience at McDonald's counters. Frankly, that's just all there
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is to it. This is just is you know, your
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bill is one ninety seven and you give them two
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dollars and two pennies and they look at you like
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you're insane, but then it yields one coin. Wow, what
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alchemy is this? And of course I had the constant argument,
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which I've told you about before, one of the silliest,
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you know, proclamations of conscience that I've had in my life,
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and lord knows I've had many. I my refusal to
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regard the fry categories as they as they portrayed them.
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When I grew up, there were no McDonald's in town
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in Fargo, North Dakota. One eventually came around, and I
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think it lanted in more Head across the river, which
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was just wrong. I mean, Morehead was the dump the backwater.
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Why didn't they get a McDonald's. Why don't we get them?
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But they did, and we went there so eager to
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try what we had seen displayed on our television sets
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for so many years. All these happy people and family
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and the damned clown all sitting down with big smiles
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on their face. You deserve a break today, so get
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up and get away to McDonald's. Well, we we ordered,
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and we got our bags and took them to the
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stools and sat down and had our first bite of McDonald's.
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And it was it was really okay. It was okay,
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this is good, isn't it. Yeah, it's it's, it's it's.
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It was like when Sonic drived through, came to town,
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plopped one down in the burbs. Everybody went there. Everybody
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couldn't wait. They went to Sonic and they ordered all
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those special hamburgers and thick things and fry things and
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the rest of it. And it came do you have
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sunk your teeth into that burger the first time? And
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it was just absolutely okay, it was it was okay.
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It was here we are, We're waiting in the car
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at a Sonic. It's okay. Yeah. Never been back. Of course,
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the Sonic that I remember, the small Sonics in the
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south and the little towns. I was driving around as
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a seed salesman from Northolk, king in the summer of
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nineteen seventy nine, and I'd stop at a Sonic and
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there is nothing like America to be at a Sonic.
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Drive in at twilight, with the cars all idling and
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each having its own little soundtrack trickling from its window,
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and the waitress is shuttling back and forth. I got
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to think of it now, best hamburger I ever had
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in my life, probably because of the MSG, possible because
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of the twilight. So yeah, I mean, burger experiences do
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vary nowadays. The average burger place is going to give
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you something so far superiority to McDonald's and so close
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to the cost it's not I mean, there's five guys,
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which I think I'm pretty much done with for the
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rest of my life, because you get a great you know,
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you get a hamburger. They're at the bottom of the bag,
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and it's expensive, and you get about six pounds of
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French fries on top of that. The French fries are good,
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but the hamburgers and it's seven dollars eight dollars of
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the rest of it. We have all these premium burger
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places around here, and frankly, I hate to say it,
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we have hamburgers at home and now, with an air
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fryer and my special recipe, I can make a better
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hamburger than most of these places do. So I don't bother.
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But I used to go to McDonald's, oh a couple
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of times a months or so, and I would have
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this constant problem with the fry categorization. The small fries,
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we all know what those look like to come in
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the little paper sleeve, and then there's the medium, which
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comes in a box with a little bit more starched
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to it, and then there's the extra. Then it's large,
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which is you know, fat, super size. This was before?
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Was it this before super I don't know. I don't care.
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Morgan Spurlock, send me a letter, tell me, oh, it's right.
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He died. But at some point they decided that they're
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going to upsize and the nomenclature, so it became small, large,
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and extra large or supersized, And they didn't change the
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actual capacity of the sleeves, the size of them, the
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quantity given. They just changed the nomenclature, and I was
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not going to go down that route. I don't know
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if this was before or after Starbucks deciding to have
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that hoity toity snooty names Venti and Windy and Mindy
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and whatever they came up with. But I refused to
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say large when I meant medium, So I would go up,
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and I would say, I would like to cheeseburgers please,
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two packets of ketchup, two packets of salt, two packets
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of mustard, two packets of pepper. I would like you
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medium fries, and I would get the blank look. But
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but that doesn't exist. There's no such thing, I shood,
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just like you've walked into McDonald's in ordered a unicorn sandwich.
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It doesn't exist. Now, of course it does, look up
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there and would I wouldn't do this patiently at first,
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until I began to sort of do it with a
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sort of psychopathic monotone. Look up there at the pictures.
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There are three of them. There are three sizes. The
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one in the middle has got to be the medium one, right,
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And then that there would be sort of a you know,
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a huff, punch in large and probably go spit on
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my burger or something like that. I don't know why
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that was the hill on which I absolutely had to die,
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but it was. And then I found it easier to
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just not go there anymore, so I didn't. Periodically, I
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would do the you know, the guy thing where you
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get the stuff that the drive in and then you
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you sit there with you know, the burger and your
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lap and try not to get salt all over everything.
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Oh you know, you will. You know that when you
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vacuumut the car, you're gonna find a little piece of
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paper that was ripped off the tip of the little
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salt container. And why there's twice as much salt in
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that thing as there was pepper, I have no idea.
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And if there was a little pepper left over, maybe
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a pepper packet left over, because sometimes they just take
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a handful and dump it in. They Okay, you'd save
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them because you might be somewhere you need pepper. You
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never ever in your life will run out of pepper,
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and pepper will be within an arms reach your your
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entire existence as an American. But hey, hey it's pepper.
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It's good stuff. You never know. So this particular particular
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McDonald's is at Southdale. Last week we were in Motley, Minnesota,
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and I decided not to go out state but to
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stick around town. I got a lot of things to
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do and consequently ended up here with you at the
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South Hill McDonald's. Now, it's been through many iterations. I
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think when it began it was the classic Mansard roof version.
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People sort of missed the passing of those people, missed
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the passing of all of the interesting commercial architecture of
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the burger places. There was a high point there in
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the fifties and sixties, with the arches and the swoops
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and the tilts and the rest of it, and the
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angled glass fantastic, wonderful little jet age space age places
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where you could easily see Rosie the robot behind in
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the grill doing everything with her well, she clicked and clanked.
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But then the Mansard roof style, which I have to
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admit was one of the uglier things to ever grace
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the American architectural commercial landscape was replaced by something so
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dull I can't recall it. And now it's been replaced
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by the ubiquitous dark box of dinner death, which seems
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to characterize every one of the places around you. I'm
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not kidding you. The taco bell, which I can see
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here from the window, is a dark grayish box of
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burrito death. And down the street there's a shake shack,
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which is black. You're expecting a horde of necromancers or
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something black. When did the fast food go goth? But
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between the screens and the black and the lack of
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the ketchup spouts. There used to be these little ketchup spouts.
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You get the little cups and then squirt the proper
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amount of ketchup in and then replace that with just
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packets that you have to rip open with your teeth
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sometimes because your hands got a burger grease and you
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can't get it. You can only get a corner of it.
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Then it doesn't all come out, and it's just not
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the same. Now Southdale therein hangs a tail, and you
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may think, why do I care about Southdale? What's so
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interesting about it? Why is the diner bothering to talk
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about shopping malls? Really, first time shopping malls are right
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up our collective alley. When it comes to you can't
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have a collective alley. You have to have individual alleys.
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When you're bowling, If you have a collective alley, then
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everybody's ball is going in all which directions and you
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never know what pins they hit, and they'd been possible
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to keep score. I suppose that's some people's version of
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an ideal society, but not mine. No, in my narrow
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view of the world, we all have our own lane
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and we stick to it. The lane here is American
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commercial architecture, American cultural history, American glory, American power and might,
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and the strange fact that shopping malls in the nineteen
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seventies were probably experiencing an apogee. And it was the
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time that we think back as absolute economic destitution, all
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and great. I'm going to tell you, and I was there.
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It wasn't fun. I was in high school, so I
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didn't have to suffer what a lot of people did
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with the mortgage rates and the gas prices and the
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rest of it. I just remember it being a time
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of brown, in a time of national malaise. A speech
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which I heard not containing that word, by the way,
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in a motel in Paris, Tennessee that summer is I
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was working my way through the South for the North
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of King Seed Company. But the seventies malls were fantastic places.
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Now we look back at the architecture, we kind of
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WinCE a little bit, because again, the age of brown,
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of Dunn, of endless expanses of glazed brick, perhaps sometimes
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overlaid with sunburst geometric patterns, of abstract sculptures, of seating
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arrangements that looked like they had been designed by the
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guy who made the Lunar Excursion module. I mean it
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just an odd, strange look. The modernism had become imaginative
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at the end of the sixties, and then it just
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lost the plot and just started going all over the
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place in the seventies. And but the malls, the malls
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were great. We got our first mall on Fargo, called
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the West Acres Mall in nineteen seventy three, and when
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it opened up, it was like the entire collective population
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of the city went there, looked around and said, is
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this a fair trade for a thriving downtown that we've
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known for sixty seventy years? Are we prepared to desert
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entirely the small businesses, the pleasures of the street, the
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variegated architecture, the landmark department stores that anchored out the
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downtown and gave it individuality, the pleasure of going into
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the drug store and smelling the lunch counter from downstairs,
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and then also knowing when we felt a rumble that
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that was the train on the main avenue tracks rumbling along.
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Are we prepared to give up all of that so
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we can go here to this white box with all
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the stores lined up? Is that a trade we're willing
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to make and every hand in town shot up, yes, enthusiastically. Oh,
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we are so ready to make that trade because we
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can shop in the wintertime without wearing a parka or
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fearing that we're going to lose a finger, and other reasons.
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So within a few months, not a few months, within
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a few years, Fargo had killed. Fargo Graveyard dead. Downtown
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took twenty thirty forty years to come back, and Southdale,
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in its own way was indicative and illustrative and instrumental
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in hollowing out the commercial core of downtown Minneapolis. Now
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they existed side by side for twenty years, and there
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were reasons for that. Downtown was big and powerful and
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had the department stores and lots of little amenities and
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great restaurants and towering towers and exciting things, and people
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worked there and they worked in the skyways, and it
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was a going concern. But Southdale was followed by Rosedale
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and Ridgedale and other Dales, all made by the same
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company that affixed Dale, suffixed Dale to them so that
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we knew what we were getting. They all had the
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big anchor department stores. They all had indoor fountains, gently ploshing,
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they had music, they had climate control, they had free parking.
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Never underestimate that. And since people were leaving the city
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to go for these new houses out that had been
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thrown up in a matter of months in the old
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potato fields. Yes, we all know the story. We all
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seemed to think somehow that the abandonment of the core
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cities in the downtown was something that was foisted upon people.
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They didn't really want it, but thanks to a combination
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of advertising and subsidies, people said, hell, well, I guess
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I have to buy a car and move. No, everybody
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wanted to and the minute they got out in those places,
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they wanted shopping centers. Now, the first shopping centers, of course,
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as you well know, were strip malls. They weren't closed.
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They had six or seven stores. They had a hardware store,
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they may have had a little grocery store, they had
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a beauty store, a pet shop, and parking and the
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rest of it. Those would be scattered around town and
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they'd have various names, and you know, moms would go
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there and their house coats and their nylon skirts once
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a week or twice a week to do this or that.
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It was part of the routine part of the life,
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and thus did commercial spending all just shift that way
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and now and then, if you were lucky, you got
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a Henry's on the corner, or a McDonald's or an
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Arby's or something like that. So just an American life.
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It's just changed ten fifteen years quickly, and for the
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00:17:20.039 --> 00:17:22.039
better for most of the people who enjoyed it, or
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they wouldn't have done it. It's my point. But Sothdale
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was the first. Oh not just in Minnesota anywhere well, no,
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not anywhere in America. It was the first. It's regarded
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as the first enclosed shopping mall in the country. And
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there are other places they are going to try to
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make that bid go ahead. I laugh at you. I
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laugh at you. It's true that there were enclosed shopping
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malls elsewhere. I've been to one in Naples, absolutely gorgeous, ancient.
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There are a couple of commercial arcades in other cities
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of the United States downtown and I don't count those
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because there are two or three stories. They're elegant, they're
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wrought iron, they have beautiful glass ceilings. And the more
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arcades that I'm talking about south There being the first
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commercial shopping mall in the suburbs. Oh, and there's the
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Burlington Arcade. I forgot a little bit about that. One.
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00:18:18.440 --> 00:18:21.359
Burlington Arcade was built in England in London, and I
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think it opened in the early eighteen hundreds. It was
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probably the first enclosed shopping structure if you look at
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the history. And I was fascinated when I found it
306
00:18:33.839 --> 00:18:35.680
just you know, three weeks ago, three four weeks ago
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in London, and I walked past it and I peered in.
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It was this incredibly beautiful space with chandeliers and bespoke
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stores and all the rest of it. So I later
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did some research and found out that A, yes, it
311
00:18:46.200 --> 00:18:48.759
was very very old. It was built by a guy
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supposedly because his wife didn't want to go shopping in
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the other districts because they were teaming with the poors. Yeah,
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I don't know. I kind of liked the idea of
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the guy building the free yes, honey, all right, okay,
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I will build you ten stores next door. Fine. I
317
00:19:02.759 --> 00:19:05.359
like that idea, but I think maybe they were just
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looking to make a buck. The other notable thing that
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00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:12.079
shows up is the shock robbery, and I think in
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00:19:12.119 --> 00:19:15.319
nineteen sixty four when somebody drove a car, just drove
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a car into the shopping center itself, like it's the
322
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Blues Brothers, and it got out with the hammers and
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sledge hammers and the rest of them started breaking out
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the store windows and nicking the goods, stole a whole
325
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bunch of jewelry. While according to the news story at
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the time, because I went back and looked at the
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papers in sixty four, the owners on the second floor,
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having seen what was being done, began hurling objects down
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at the men, including a chair that somebody grabbed from
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their office and threw over the railings, and an onyx
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ashtray which apparently clipped one of the robbers in the head.
332
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And that wasn't fun. They all got away, though, and
333
00:19:51.759 --> 00:19:56.359
they were never caught smash and grab daylight or driving
334
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a car into the arcade right off the street London
335
00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:04.000
Swing Pendum Dow. Anyway, I was there, and across the
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00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:05.960
street there's another one that was built years later, maybe
337
00:20:06.039 --> 00:20:09.000
decades later, maybe a century later. That's, you know, London
338
00:20:09.039 --> 00:20:13.519
style in a much more elegant refined spaces. So yes,
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00:20:14.599 --> 00:20:17.799
different kinds of spaces, Shopping areas manifest themselves in different ways.
340
00:20:17.839 --> 00:20:21.359
Have different clienteles have different impacts, but Southdale really set
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a standard for the rest of the world, well the
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rest of the country, and everybody copied it. It was
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designed by a man named Victor Grooen, growing the Victor
344
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Grooen an Austrian who had urban ideas. Yeah, he had
345
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very many urban ideas. So he saw Southdale as the center,
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as the town square of a new mode of civic life,
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and theorized that it would be filled with apartment buildings,
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it would be filled with libraries and schools and amenities,
349
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and this would be a new way of living. As
350
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a matter of fact, the very first Southdale that opened
351
00:20:57.079 --> 00:21:00.559
had a grocery store, a red owl, and it had
352
00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:03.519
you know, kids, shoot stores. It had everything you needed.
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It was It was truly a downtown, just built up
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from scratch in the middle of nowhere. And then Gruin
355
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over the years would come to denounce it, and the
356
00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:19.400
sophisticates of Minneapolis would come to denounce it as well,
357
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because it was everything that was wrong with America. You
358
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had to drive a car to get there, had empty,
359
00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:31.559
big seas of asphalt, hot baking in the sun, wind
360
00:21:31.720 --> 00:21:35.799
swept and pitiless in the winter. Inside it consumed too
361
00:21:35.880 --> 00:21:41.640
much energy to keep its temperatures nice, et cetera, etc. Well,
362
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I never didn't love it. Came down as a child
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with my parents, and I have some blurry photographs that
364
00:21:47.920 --> 00:21:49.880
were taking from the second floor with them down sitting
365
00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:52.759
in the climate controlled a cafe at Dayton's in their
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shirt sleeves in December. And I remember that place was
367
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a place of wonders and miracles, birds in two story
368
00:22:01.240 --> 00:22:05.079
golden cages, stairs that went up and down. I mean
369
00:22:05.119 --> 00:22:10.720
Fargo had one escalator at the Woolworths this place. Escalators here,
370
00:22:10.880 --> 00:22:17.480
escalators there, abundance of escalators. Hmmm. Well, things move on,
371
00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:22.240
and two things happened Victor Grun's denunciation aside. That happened
372
00:22:22.279 --> 00:22:26.680
eventually was at Sauceltant into exactly what Ivan did, No Ah,
373
00:22:27.839 --> 00:22:34.079
it did. Over the years around the place came apartment buildings, libraries,
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and eventually a park was built that extended from it
375
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and wound its way behind the various Big Buck stores
376
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to a man made lake surrounded by three fairly sort
377
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of quasi classical office structures that reflected beautifully in the lake.
378
00:22:49.799 --> 00:22:52.640
And so eventually, over the years it became what Gruon
379
00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:55.160
wanted it to be. He just didn't live long enough
380
00:22:55.160 --> 00:22:58.119
to see it. It didn't happen because of a master plan.
381
00:22:58.839 --> 00:23:01.759
Then everything would have been ugly and rectilinear and would
382
00:23:01.759 --> 00:23:03.839
have been in the same style, and everybody would have
383
00:23:03.839 --> 00:23:06.079
hated it and turned it into ugly seventy stuff. And
384
00:23:06.079 --> 00:23:07.839
then they would have stripped it that and turned it
385
00:23:07.880 --> 00:23:11.880
into ugly ninety. No, it just it arose organically. And
386
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:13.880
the other thing that happened was that the enclosed mall
387
00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:17.799
that Southdale pioneered was so successful that eventually had ended
388
00:23:17.880 --> 00:23:20.039
up producing the leviathan at the edge of town known
389
00:23:20.079 --> 00:23:22.839
as the Mall of America. And the Mall of America,
390
00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:28.119
shall we say, isn't it ironically drew away from Southdale
391
00:23:28.160 --> 00:23:31.599
the same commercial vigor that Southdale had drawn away from
392
00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:36.960
downtown Circle of Life. Man, I think my coffee is
393
00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:38.519
ready to sit here. The reason that I haven't had
394
00:23:38.599 --> 00:23:43.720
name try this here? Okay, that's okay. The reason I
395
00:23:43.720 --> 00:23:46.200
didn't try the coffee beforehand and waited for it to cool,
396
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:48.119
I show I suppose I should have opened the top
397
00:23:48.839 --> 00:23:50.599
is that when you order a couple of McDonald's coffee,
398
00:23:51.119 --> 00:23:52.640
they're going to put that lid on it. And that
399
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:56.759
lid has got that small, tiny little aperture we call
400
00:23:56.799 --> 00:23:59.279
Satan's sphincter, because if you try to take the coffee
401
00:23:59.279 --> 00:24:02.400
through that thing, Molton Labbat's gonna burn your mouth and
402
00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:04.480
then you're gonna be like, well, you know, I wouldn't
403
00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:07.039
be like that stupid lady who had the McDonald's coffee
404
00:24:07.079 --> 00:24:09.160
spilling her lap and she sued them because you get burned.
405
00:24:09.200 --> 00:24:14.559
What an idiot lady? That was? Okay, all right, you
406
00:24:14.680 --> 00:24:18.440
know right now somebody just paused in anger, turned it
407
00:24:18.480 --> 00:24:20.599
off and is writing an angry letter about how the
408
00:24:20.599 --> 00:24:23.039
woman actually had a case because the coffee was really
409
00:24:23.039 --> 00:24:25.599
too hot, and that a jury found so that it
410
00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:28.000
wasn't a silly lawsuit at all. I know that. I
411
00:24:28.119 --> 00:24:31.680
just like to make people do that. Anyway. It's not
412
00:24:31.759 --> 00:24:36.359
bad coffee. And that's the thing about McDonald's. It's not
413
00:24:36.480 --> 00:24:42.359
bad coffee. So I could go over I suppose next
414
00:24:42.359 --> 00:24:44.480
week to Southdale and sit alone in the food court.
415
00:24:45.279 --> 00:24:49.759
It's empty, places moved in, places moved out. They've tried
416
00:24:49.799 --> 00:24:52.839
several renovations over the years. They've added stores, and they
417
00:24:52.880 --> 00:24:55.680
had a good run, a good, powerful run, and then
418
00:24:55.720 --> 00:24:58.000
the mall of America did what it did, and it sank,
419
00:24:58.799 --> 00:25:03.599
and then recently they decided, we give up on the
420
00:25:03.640 --> 00:25:06.799
whole be in a store for every place, for every store,
421
00:25:06.920 --> 00:25:10.000
We're gonna go nothing but high end, nothing but Coach
422
00:25:10.079 --> 00:25:15.519
and Apple and bright Linger. And if that's then Zenziger
423
00:25:15.599 --> 00:25:23.319
Watches and all high end, And who goes there? People
424
00:25:23.839 --> 00:25:26.519
who get up, I suppose, and stretch and have their
425
00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:32.039
morning breakfast yogurt and wheat germ, and then say I
426
00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:34.400
think I'm going to see what's new and Coach begs
427
00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:38.640
today and drive themselves to the mall. But it's just
428
00:25:38.680 --> 00:25:41.880
not the same. There's no kids hanging around. There's no
429
00:25:41.960 --> 00:25:43.920
record store you can go and flip through. There's no
430
00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:45.559
Spencer Gifts where you can go to the back and
431
00:25:45.559 --> 00:25:49.160
look at the ooh la law posters. There's no you know,
432
00:25:49.799 --> 00:25:51.920
fashion place where you can look at the stuff that
433
00:25:51.960 --> 00:25:54.079
you would never in a million years be caught in
434
00:25:54.160 --> 00:25:55.920
and then find the one thing that you absolutely have
435
00:25:55.960 --> 00:25:59.640
to have. There's none of that. And that's what malls
436
00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:04.319
used to be, totally solidly middle class, perhaps with one
437
00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:05.960
good anchor store in the end that had a little
438
00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:11.599
uphead more higher class cachet the entirety of the culture
439
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:15.279
in America. They're in one big, brightly lit place, complete
440
00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:19.839
with fountains and the wafting smell of cinnamon. Some places
441
00:26:19.839 --> 00:26:23.000
they still thrive, and that's great, but we built too many,
442
00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:27.319
and too many have ended up as YouTube fodder for
443
00:26:27.880 --> 00:26:31.720
the guys who just go spelunking in empty, abandoned commercial places.
444
00:26:32.279 --> 00:26:34.480
And I'm in the generation and perhaps the generation behind
445
00:26:34.519 --> 00:26:37.079
me that feels deeply sad when they see these places,
446
00:26:37.079 --> 00:26:39.079
when they see a mall dead, when they see a
447
00:26:39.240 --> 00:26:44.160
mall gone, because they can imagine themselves at that golden
448
00:26:44.200 --> 00:26:47.160
age of life where all seems possible, where it's the
449
00:26:47.200 --> 00:26:49.759
weekend and you're going to go to the movie theater
450
00:26:49.839 --> 00:26:52.000
to see that movie you've really been looking forward to.
451
00:26:52.079 --> 00:26:54.039
It's incredible the previews you've read. I mean, you saw
452
00:26:54.039 --> 00:26:56.640
a preview, you've read about it. You can have some popcorn,
453
00:26:56.640 --> 00:26:58.400
you can walk over to the butter thing and double
454
00:26:58.400 --> 00:27:05.359
pump it. I mean, uh yeah. Anyway, where was I
455
00:27:05.400 --> 00:27:09.200
going with this? Absolutely nowhere except that I'm number one
456
00:27:09.279 --> 00:27:11.839
ninety seven. That's what they called when my coffee was ready.
457
00:27:12.480 --> 00:27:14.920
I wonder who number one is. I wonder if every
458
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:17.839
day starts with somebody who's number one. I wonder if
459
00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:20.079
every day starts with some old man who's been coming
460
00:27:20.079 --> 00:27:22.160
here since they put since they built the thing, it
461
00:27:22.200 --> 00:27:25.519
wasn't old, then comes by for some flapchat, for his
462
00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:30.519
morning pancakes and his triangle of hash browns, and every
463
00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:34.039
morning he's number one. I'd like to think that's the case.
464
00:27:34.519 --> 00:27:36.559
I'd like to think that if somebody got there sooner
465
00:27:36.599 --> 00:27:39.119
than him, that the person at the counter would say,
466
00:27:39.200 --> 00:27:42.039
could you just hold on a minute, because because because
467
00:27:42.079 --> 00:27:44.960
Bob's gonna be along, you'll know him when you see him.
468
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:47.480
It's the old guy. He's got World War two cap on,
469
00:27:47.640 --> 00:27:51.960
gray hair, a little bit of a stoop, jeans, very
470
00:27:51.960 --> 00:27:56.200
clean white sneakers, and Bob's out. He's number one. But
471
00:27:56.240 --> 00:27:58.759
there he is. He's coming now through the door. Can
472
00:27:58.799 --> 00:28:01.559
he just wait a second? And it's a test of
473
00:28:01.640 --> 00:28:07.039
your character if you say absolutely, let Bob go first,
474
00:28:07.400 --> 00:28:08.880
or if you say no, I've been standing here for
475
00:28:08.880 --> 00:28:11.640
a minute, so I'd like to place my order. Then you,
476
00:28:12.279 --> 00:28:18.440
if you're that second person, are wrong and bad and
477
00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:21.480
you ought not to be that way. Be more like Bob,
478
00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:25.200
Bob who shows up every morning, Bob who's there with
479
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a smile in his face. And Bob who would understand
480
00:28:28.920 --> 00:28:33.279
if he wasn't number one. Yeah, I want to be Bob,
481
00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:38.519
just not a McDonald's. Hi. I'm James Alyx. Bye, I'm
482
00:28:38.599 --> 00:28:43.920
James Lylyx. This has been the diner in absentia, in exile,
483
00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:59.880
and we'll see you down the road. Ricochet, Join the Conversation.
484
00:29:10.519 --> 00:29:13.200
One ninety eight, one ninety eight