Hamburgers

Hamburgers..I grew up eating hamburgers. As a teenager, we could buy a hamburger for a quarter. If we wanted it sandwich style, the price increased to 30 cents. Adding cheese was an extra nickel.

A regular hamburger had a bun, ground beef, mayo, mustard, dill pickle slices and onion. Sandwich style added lettuce and tomato.

Then about the time I was in high school, a franchise burger house called Burger King came to town and sold burgers for less, but the taste was less too. Later on, we got a McDonalds with 15 cent hamburgers and the taste was even less than the original less.

It's a pleasure when I can find a place that can prepare an actual hamburger with all the trimmings that has a good taste to it. It may sound funny, but Rally's makes a pretty good hamburger and usually sells it for a dollar. It's almost like the ones I remember as a kid. If only the patty was a bit thicker.

And french fries? They really used to be good. Then somebody figured out how to freeze them and pop them in a deep fryer ice cold. At least they were still served with salt on them. But now, they are fresh frozen quickly fried and served without salt. Ours were made with real potatoes, never frozen, cut up at the restuarant, and some actually still had peel on them.

The other day I went into a restaurant known for it's burgers. I ordered a hamburger. It came with a big meat patty, dill pickle, onion, lettuce, tomato, and, and,....well nothing else. No mayo, no mustard, no ketchup. But it was served with a handful of tasteless fries. The waitress seemed puzzeled when I sent her back to retrieve the condiments that should have been on the burger to start with.

Obviously the folks at Ruby Tuesday didn't grow up eating real hamburgers. What a shame.

Well you can't get six plays on the jukebox for a quarter any more either. But mine still gives you six. The songs I selected with this blog are really oldies, they were popular in the mid-1950's.