Sausage Burgers and Stolen Buicks

Yesterday, I lost my sausage burger virginity. It’s almost like the real thing. When you have sex for the first time (with or without protection), you wonder for some time if you may have gotten pregnant or acquired a sexually transmitted disease. It's all so new. When you eat a White Tower sausage burger for the first time (with or without protection), you wonder if you've acquired a parasite. In both cases, the event is much anticipated, and the anticipation just adds to the overall experience. It hurts a little (during vs. after), but you’re transformed by the experience. You walk around as if initiated into a club; those who haven't yet participated haven’t gotten to your level of play.

The sausage burger I ate yesterday is talking to me today. In fact, it’s yelling at me. "I was a friggin' sausage burger!! What did you expect? I am what I am – pork butts, pig snouts. Quit your bitching" - or words to that effect. I feel like saying aloud, "Boy oh boy... I could sure use a root beer to go with yesterday's sausage burger" - but I'll maintain a more dignified veneer this morning. My belches speak for themselves.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

One of the first things you do when you meet a potential match in a mate (online or otherwise) is discuss the foods you like to eat and compare notes. The really important one first (and so much rests on this first one)... Miracle Whip or Mayonnaise? And then comes ...mustard in your tuna? Favorite hangover food? Chocolate chip cookies or Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies? You get the picture. Along with that are favorite burgers and burger joints. Long before I ever moved to Ohio from Washington DC, I'd heard about the White Tower's greasy, but delectable, burgers. Ray (my reason for moving) reminded me of such one day, as we drove through Toledo after the Rib-Off (yet another Toledo taste extravaganza). But to pile a burger on top of ribs is over-kill (even for us), so that particular taste sensation was delayed.

Then, the day of reckoning arrived. I was sitting outside reading, enjoying the cool weather and a book entitled, "A Much Younger Man" - well written, albeit kind of yucky. The thought occurred to me that most of my adult life, I've attracted older (mostly foreign) men, and that the first time I'd ever attracted a younger man was just several months before I met Ray. The much younger man was a 27-year-old fireman, no less. Oh well, I digress. Sigh.

So...I was sitting there reading, when up drives Ray from his round of the computer stores, and he utters those three little words that all women long to hear from their men.

"Could you eat?"

I'd driven by the White Tower a number of times. Toledo, as a city, is either in a state of decline or a state of stagnation, depending on whether you see it coming or going (I now live in Michigan, and Detroit is a thriving, cosmopolitan star compared to Toledo). The block White Tower is on is in a "Baghdad" kind of state. The building itself is maybe 80 square feet...maybe.
It is white (ish). It does not tower. It has crooked mini blinds covering three quarters of the front picture window. It looks like an out-of-business shoe repair place, without the ads for shoe polish and 1950s-style wing tips on display. I am being kind (ish). I see a woman's white vinyl purse pushed up against the glass (peeking out from under the blinds), so I know there's life in there, or at least a purse.

Ray pulls the door open, and we enter a world of white tiled walls and bright green counters. It is a world of grease and hardening arteries - a world which dares to have a sign that says, "This is a NO non-smoking section establishment" - against the law we imagine, but our kind of place. This is a world where the cooking counter seats seven and the window counter six (and that's if you really wanna get to know your neighbor); a place where wizened old men sit chatting with each other but don't necessarily hear what's being said. This is a world run by two ancient women...very, very, very ancient women. Ray says they've been there since before forever, which I trust is a long time in Ohio-speak.

A woman with long, gray, pony tailed hair sits at the window counter, reading a gourmet cookbook and orthopedic shoe catalogues. She talks about fettuccini and pasta sauces with the old man next to her. (I didn't hear him say a word the entire time we were there.) They have no food in front of them, and it appears as if they are just hanging out. We order and sit near them...and sit...and sit...and also appear to be just hanging out.

The sun beats in under the mini blinds, and a lone fly (the store mascot, I believe) keeps us company. The place is actually pretty full. Very few people have food in front of them, but one of the old women is busy behind the grill ... busybusybusy. Ray and I comment on the deserted atmosphere of the streets, on the potential the city has, and on the loss of jobs created by the departure of certain manufacturers; our stomachs growl.

Fifteen minutes pass and two people at the counter now have food.

Old lady #1 is the order taker and drink maker. After ten more minutes, I hear, "Miss - here're your drinks." We sip them; conserving beverage for the long wait. We now realize that old woman #2 is cooking one meal – maybe even one item - possibly even one French fry - at a time. Nobody complains. Nobody blinks an eye. Frankly, everybody in there just seems glad to be alive.

Thirty minutes after entering this world that time forgot I hear Old woman #1 say, "Mom - sausage burgers." My heart leaps at the thought that our food might be ready. Instead, #1 is merely reminding #2 of our order. Almost everybody has their food at this point. We still appear to be (say it with me now) just hanging out.

A gold station wagon pulls up across the street. Middle-aged white dude gets out, stands by driver side door, stares and then raises a camera straight at us, or so it seems. Ray raises his head so it's above the blinds and out of the frame. "Son of a bitch! They found me," he says. Two thoughts come to mind. 1) If there's a reward for Ray's capture, I want it and 2) where in the hell is my food? The man gets back in the car and drives away.

Sausage burger: noun - bun, big greasy sausage patty, lettuce, huge hunk of sweet onion, bun. Yummilicious.
The fries are cooked in animal fat - golden crispy outside and moist inside. As Ray says, nobody's told these two ole birds about Canola oil yet.

A cop enters and stands at the counter waiting for his order, which has been called in ahead of time. Smart man.

Old woman #1 - "Mom - you want your marker? Can you read that?"
Old woman #2 - "I'm fine… What's this say?"
Old woman #2 - "What's this say?"
Old woman #1 - "You want me to get your marker?"
Old woman #2 - "I can read it. What's this say?"
Old woman #1 - "Which order are you workin' on?"
Old woman #2 - "Where's my marker?"
Old woman #1 - "Want me to get it for you?"
Old woman #2 - "No. What's this say?"

At that point, a car alarm goes off outside. We've been watching a woman stick something under the wiper blade of a 1980-something Buick parked in a vacant lot across the street. She moves slowly to the rear driver side door, reaches in the window (is the glass broken out? can't quite see), and opens the driver door. She ducks under the dash, as if looking for the alarm “off” switch. She slowly gets up, walks around the car and around the car and back in under the dash - then up and around to the other side - sublimely unhurried, but now clearly looking for the alarm off switch.

It's kind of like the "Alien" movie motto. "In space, nobody can hear you scream." Well, "In Toledo nobody can hear your car get ripped off...and if they can, they don't care." The cop never once looked to see what was happening - not even when he left the restaurant with his Bag O' Fat. After eating my meal, I could understand why he wanted to get down to business with his burger. Delicious. Remember my previous comparison to sex? The taste of a sausage burger is at least as good as sex in your 30s (if you’re a woman) and sex at 19 (if you’re a man). That’s pretty damn good, and no mood lighting is required.

Our drinks long finished, the grease beginning to congeal on our plates, and our appetites sated, we leave the restaurant, get in our car, and head back to Perrysburg Township, aka Home Sweet Home. We have no more than just left the pitted roads of Toledo for the Interstate, when the impact of the meal begins to hit. If my leggings had a zipper, the zipper would be open. Ray burps. I burp. I yawn. Ray yawns. Ray burps again. I burp again.

In a fog of post-gastrointestinal bliss, I realize something. Ray and I are experiencing the real time living out of the experiences on which we’d compared notes while courting each other online. This was the culmination of all those online questions – the matching up of likes and dislikes that made us feel so much like overgrown sixth graders yielding slam books.

Just imagine (I mean really...just imagine), what if (I can't fathom it but...) what if - way back when…what if I had succumbed to the charms of "a much younger man"? The line that divides what is from what could have been reads...

"Mayonnaise - NOT Miracle Whip."