Camping Out By Chick-Fil-A

Here's a funny thing: until this morning, there was a tent city in front of the new Chick-Fil-A that went up at the corner of the two main drags near my house. Well, fine, so it was more like a tent hamlet, but still, that's a curious thing to see in front of a restaurant. Especially a fast food restaurant. The only time I see a line like that at McDonald's or Taco Bell is on New Year's, when the wait at Taco Bell was about 20 minutes for the first one we tried, and they had run out of food, they claimed (we went to a second franchise and they served us, though they were out of beans). But tents! Never! It was like a really boring tailgate party! There were all sorts of grills and lawn chairs and what looked suspiciously like violations of open container laws, and then no game at the end. Those souls are braver than I am, that's for sure.

It was such a mystery. Why tents? Why Chick-Fil-A? Surely if they were hungry, they could have just gone to any of the assorted fast food restaurants nearby? The local high school has an open campus lunch, meaning the students can leave, so the place is fraught with sandwich shops and burger joints. Surely if they needed housing, they might have chosen to take a room in one of the cheapish hotels half a mile down the road? They all looked prosperous enough with their posh tents and their North Face fleeces, warming their hands around a barbeque.

Had I checked Wikipedia, earlier, I might have learned that there's a whole traveling group called "The Herd" who attend grand openings of as many Chick-Fil-As as possible. I might have learned about the First Hundred promotion whereby the dedicated first hundred people to enter the doors of a new Chick-Fil-A get a coupon for a free combo meal every week. Ah, if only I had done my (questionable) research, I would not have been so puzzled and amused.

Anyway, the grand opening was this morning, and there was some poor soul dressed as a cow in a nightgown dragging a billboard around through the morning frost. The tents had all vanished like John Edwards' hopes after New Hampshire. I'd imagine the camping out part was more a draw than the food - I don't know anyone whose passion for chicken sandwiches would normally convince them to wait around in thirty degree weather for hours and hours. Maybe I should have told Biceps about it, though. He appreciates a good piece of chicken, as I am reminded every afternoon when he starts to heat up his Tupperware of pasty chicken and smooshy peas. I really hope that the genuinely homeless people in the area found out about the promotion - they're a lot more in need of a chicken combo meal than the people I saw making merry in the early evening in the parking lot of the brand new Chick-Fil-A. Ah well.

I shouldn't mock. If they ever offered a nifty promotion for a vegetarian fast food chain (oh, I have high hopes), I'd probably be out there in my sleeping bag with my little camping lantern too.

tiny bubbles

On a lighter note, things I should not do at work: read about Trappist ales and extreme beers all morning. After all, even if there were cafés about where one could get a humble pint of Affligem or Chimay or Leffe (a favorite in the little white house in Cambrai, probably because it was cheap), it's not even noon. My American sensibilities don't approve of beer at breakfast hours. On the other hand, it's four in the afternoon in France, a perfect moment to sit down in a bar.

Really, the American attitude toward alcohol is regrettable. We have the all-or-nothing gumption that serves well when it comes to exploration and stealing other people's lands, and less well when it comes to binge-drinking. How scandalous to have drinks at lunch! How daring! How will one ever refrain from saying or doing regrettable things in the workplace? But one glass of wine or beer does not most people drunken make. Witness the bottles of wine in the teachers' lunchroom at my lycée. The French don't drink to get drunk, at least mostly not during the work day. It's just part of the daily life just as much as the long lunch is, though I can't deny both probably helped my colleagues deal with their unruly adolescent charges.

Anyway, the point is that I'm extremely suggestible, apparently, because now I'd love to dash to the liquor store on the main drag and pick up a can of Guinness with its rattly little ball, or maybe the double chocolate stout, since the big warehouse-style booze emporium that might have Trappist ales is a bit of a schlep. I'm going to spend my lunch hour wishing I had something fizzy and hoppy to be a counterpoint to my Thai leftovers. I think what I'm more longing for is the town square in Cambrai where we usually went for a beer, the sunshine and the tiny cars dashing over the cobblestones and the utterly stylish pedestrians and the inscrutable statues on the dome of the town hall. It's not so much the bite of the ale as the smooth patter of French all around me and the sense of ease and comraderie.

Unfortunately, I don't think my boss would be down with the idea of me keeping a six-pack in the office fridge, so that idea is dashed all to smithereens. I like my propriety anyway. It's constricting, but the support is like nothing else. I just ought not to read the Dining section of the NYTimes until it's properly time to eat things.

On the plus side, it does distract me from my desire to punch Bill Kristol in the face.