Last Friday night, I wasn’t sure if I was going to live to
see Saturday morning. And, no, I’m not being overly dramatic.
Let me set the stage: I met up with some buddies I hadn’t
seen in a while and we enjoyed a few beers throughout the night—not so many as
to be irresponsible, but just enough to where decision making was suspect. The
last of those decisions, the crucial one, was to eat a slinger* at a greasy
spoon, emphasis on the filthy, grimey unwashed spoon.
How this place passed the health code will remain a mystery,
primarily since I don’t know that I ever want to return. For one, you have to
be buzzed in and, once inside, you realize that the criteria isn’t all that
strict**. Secondly, the kitchen was manned by either a woman and her son or a
woman and her son, who might possibly be her lover. It’s a coin flip. Also, the
man had the worst teeth I’d ever seen outside of an African fundraising
commercial, but, to be fair, also had a robust repertoire of jokes, many of
which were actually funny.
The two worked efficiently behind the wellworn counter that
sat underneath a bank of all-too-bright fluorescent lights. Some would say
too efficiently. For example: me. Call me an old fuddy duddy, but I’d like the
person handling my food to be a different person than the one handling the
trash—or at least be a person who washed their hands in between.
As for the slinger itself … not bad. Just the right amount
of heart clogging goodness at a fair price.
Upon leaving the establishment, one of the guys summed it up
perfectly.
“I think I just got Hepatitis F.”
*A local delicacy consisting of eggs, sausage and hash
browns covered in chili with a side of toast, primarily served as a means of
sobering up quickly and efficiently.
**Basically, do you look like a murderer or not?
