Well,
we found a place to eat a burger in Waco, Texas. No, we found THE place. In response to a quick text I sent asking for
some lunch ideas, Josh replied with two suggestions. One, a sandwich shop, was right by the
convention center. We went there the
first day. Pretty good sandwich. Also had a guy walk up to us and strike up a
conversation. To be honest, I didn’t recognize
him. In fact it took the better part of the
day for me to come up with his name. He
was from way, way back to even before I was a youth pastor. Sigh. It
takes longer and longer for long term memories to escape from their warehouses
nowadays.
But today
I speak of the second option Josh sent us.
The name was innocuous enough. In
fact I just assumed he misspelled it or auto-correct jumbled it up or
something. Dubl-R Old Fashioned
Hamburgers. I typed it into Google maps,
though, and it came right up, just as spelled.
Now, we don’t know much about the town of Waco yet, but it didn’t take
long for us to become suspicious of the route Google Siri was suggesting. Certainly not the safest-feeling area of the community,
to be sure. We followed her directions
to the letter, though. And still, we
almost missed it entirely. Tiny little building. We circled the block, and sure enough, there
it was.
Chris
said, “Are you sure you want to go in there?”
well, the parking lot was almost full …. with construction trucks. And we all know they know the best places to
eat. So we walked inside. And she said it again, “Are you sure you want
to eat here?” Now more than ever was my
thought. The kitchen is right in the
open with a bar-type counter facing it. Everyone
has to buss his own table. Not that
unusual, right? Well, here’s the
interesting thing. Instead of placing
your little plastic basket and setting it on a counter somewhere, you put it
straight into the sink of soapy water marked “Wash.” They don’t use frozen meat. The cook just grabs a wad of hamburger meat, plops
it on the table, smacks it flat with a spatula, and slaps it onto the
griddle. And they fried the bun along
with the meat. Oh, and they had bacon. Can’t beat bacon.
There
was live entertainment, too. Well, sort
of. The guy who was apparently the store
owner was … verbal. He was working
behind the counter. At one point he chewed
out a few of his customers (a couple of
college students) for texting instead of talking. “Hey! Put
those phones away and talk to each other.
What’s the matter with you?” The
fry cook stirred the pot a little when he carefully pointed out that one of the
customers liked to play video games. The
owner started out simple enough. “What’s
your favorite video video game?
Hesitantly, the guy mumbled “Atari.”
That’s all it took. The trap had
been set and the prey had stumbled right into it. The owner yelled, “Video games! Why are sitting around the house playing
video games all the time? Get a
job. I bet you still live with your
Mama, too. Give her a break. Get your own place. Oh, but to do that you’d have to GET A
JOB.” Between them all, they also solved
all the problems the Dallas Cowboys are having, but no one has asked them. Oh, and right in the middle of one such
tirade the owner suddenly stopped and said, “Wait. That guy there is praying. Everybody shut up so he can pray.”
So …
highly entertaining place. Oh, and the
burger was fabulous. Not that I would
have particularly noticed. Too much
going on to concentrate on food.
Psalms
1:1 says, “Blessed is the man who does
not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinner or sit in
the seat of mockers.”
Father,
thank you for people who really enjoy what they do for a living. Amen.
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