01/03/2002 Archived Entry: "Mmmm, Texas Double Cheeseburger..."

Truly, the most perfect of all fast food items is Wendy's Texas Double Cheeseburger.
Today, I will make use of the [MORE] feature.

It is a quarter-pound double-cheeseburger, with mustard and onions and lettuce and tomato. One makes a great snack. Two make a great meal. It is, for all intents and purposes, perfect.

I recall my first ski trip to Colorado when I was in 8th grade. I was totally blown away that the Wendy's restaurants in Colorado didn't have Texas Double Cheeseburgers. I mean, what the hell? Instead, non-Texas Wendy's have this lame-ass quarter-pound double cheeseburger that is nothing at all like the Texas Double Cheeseburger. Ha. I spit on their unworthy cheeseburgers.

There's a lot of that kind of thing with a lot of businesses in Texas. McDonald's, for instance, has the Texas Homestyle burger, which is a lot like a Quarter Pounder except it's got a ton of spicy mustard and onions on it.

And don't even get me STARTED on car and truck commercials. Dodge, Ford, Chevy--all of them run targeted campaigns that play up Texans' feelings of separatism. I can't remember when I haven't seen a Ford commercial that didn't include the slogan, "Texas, Ford, and You," and that damn "Texas' truck stop--the new Dodge!" jingo sometimes starts echoing in my head and I feel like I need to claw out someone's eyes.

Do other states have this kind of thing? Do New Hampshire car dealerships have special New Hampshire Pride sales? Is there a special New Hampshire cheeseburger in any New Hampshire-area McDonald's?

I wonder about these things. Texas is a strange place. I've never lived anywhere else, so I just assumed that other states do this kind of thing, too. I remember reading about the Republic of Texas wackos in the news when I was younger and blindly assuming that other states must have movements dedicated to the secession of their state from the USA as well--I've since found out, thankfully, that that's not the case and that Texas is just weird.

I mean, it's not like EVERYONE here is weird. Sure, I can walk down any street in Houston at any given moment and probably point out one guy dressed "Western"-style, but for every one guy dressed like that, there's a hundred in business suits and ties, five hundred in casual clothes, and another fifty homeless people begging for crack handouts. From what I see in movies, Houston is as blandly anonymous as any other American metropolis, and at least our freeway system isn't as screwed up as Dallas/Ft. Worth's is (DFW natives, you KNOW it's true--don't try to deny it).

I know Texans are thought of strangely, though. I ski just about every year (usually in Vail, CO and surrounding areas, though the past three years we've skiied Jay Peak in Vermont, and I swear, I will never go back to Colorado), and whenever I engage in chairlift conversation--which you have to do, especially on those old slow two- and three-seaters--I'm invariably asked all kinds of strange questions. After "I'm from Houston" clears my lips, the other guy starts:

"Houston? Really? Do you ride horses to work?"
"Do you have oil wells in your back yard?"
"How big is your ranch?"
"Wow! Do you have phones out there?"
"How many guns do you own?"
"Do you carry your guns around when you're riding your horse?"

I kid you not. The answers to these questions, by the way, are no, no, I live in an apartment, yes, none, and no.

I close this entry with a quote from "Wayne's World": "Delaware. Hi...I'm in...Delaware."

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