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Health & Fitness

When a hamburger is not a hamburger

The other night I worked later than usual and when I pulled out of the pahking laht, I thought Hmmmm! Where to get a bite to eat? Nothing in town excited me. The usual haunts close at 2 in the afternoon and the others didn't stimulate salivation. In the old days, the days when the Rector family owned the Newport Creameries, I would have gone over to the Creamery in the what? CVS? Plaza and have a cup of coffee and a mushroom burger. Those days are long over since the Rectors sold the company to a stripminer and after he appropriated the assets, what was left was picked up by the King of Burger Kings who closed many of them, including my favorite town feeding station.

Still the thought of a mushroom burger, Creamery style, hit a spot and I headed down through the interminable red lights and bumpiness of the Post Road to the Newport Creamery in North Kingstown. A bit of a ride for a burger but this was the first in a decade so what the hell. Upon entering the ice cream palace, I recalled that Newport Creameries all had an aroma of their own. A sort of ice creamy, sugary, cooked meat, counter rag smell. Accordingly, the NK one smells the same as the others. I sat at a counter and let my nostrils reminisce about the old days.

A teener waitresser came for my order:
“I'll have a Mushroom Burger!’
“Do you want fries with that Mushroom Burger?”
“Sure.”
“Anything to drink?”
“No.”
“Coffee? Water?”
“No! All set with just the burger and fries.”

Almost twenty minutes passed by but the wait would be worth it. When it finally came, it was a Mushroom CHEESE Burger! Ack! I hate cheese on my burgers because the cheese not only has little discernable taste of its own, it alters the meat taste and obliterates the mushroom taste. But after waiting almost a half hour, I relunctantly started chewing into the burger and fries. Creamery fries are good fries. But the cheese hung in semi-liquid globules off the roll, fell onto and stuck to the plate. I felt my heart falter a bit as it tried to fight off the saturated, unsaturated, and trans fats as I chewed down the package with less than my usual enthusiasm.

When the slip came, I would be $10 lighter with tip so I thought it my duty to query the waitress about why the cheese?
“I ordered a mushroom burger. I got a mushroom CHEESE burger! What say you?”
“That's a mushroom burger!”
“No, that's a mushroom CHEEEEEESE burger!
“Yes, it comes with cheese.
“No, a CHEESEburger comes with cheese, a hamburger does not come with cheese.
“Yes, it does, but I could have had the chef hold the cheese if you didn't want it. But you would have paid the same with or without cheese.”
“You're serious, right? This is a Newport Creamery dictum de omni et nullo?”
“Huh?
Explaining the dictum thesis through to its end was futile and just too much work.
“Basically, all hamburgers now have cheese, according to Mr. Newportcreamery!”
She nods, blurs her eyes, and stares over my head at someone next counter over. I have lost her.

That, of course, is inconsistent with both common sense and my experiences with the East Greenwich Newport Creamery. I never got cheese on my mushroom burgers there… ever! Nevah!!

Well, no matter. I will never test the mushroom burger waters there again. Such lunacy boggles my mind and I can no longer handle such affronts to the little common sense I have left. I will never be able to navigate the new reality and frankly, I'm scared.

I dropped a sawbuck on the counter, walked out to the car and drove out onto the washboard that is Post Road in North Kingstown and bet the odds on the some six redlights on the way home. I lost most of them.

Sometimes when one gets home, one slams the door or gate behind oneself and just leans back against it, thanking the deities -- any of them listening -- for successfully closing one’s little world in around one again. In this case, “one” being me. Home Sweet Home!


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