Five Guys

I grew up in the years when McDonalds was starting out. One day, the director of the farm for boys where I lived said we were going out to dinner, the only time we ever did. He gave us each a buck and told us if we really wanted to pig out, to bring another one.

And so we took the school bus to one of the first McDonalds in New Jersey and we did, pig out that is. Burgers were 19 cents, so were fries. A large soft drink was about a quarter and milkshakes were 39 cents.

Of course, I became addicted to McDonalds and have about an extra 50 pounds on my body to prove it.

I’ve tried Wendy’s and Burger King. But they just didn’t measure up in those days and Mickey D’s has been my preference  -- especially when I’m on the road.

In fact, as I write this, the prom date and I are on the road in Ohio and the Mickey D breakfast menu is just about the only one designed for a take out breakfast. We drove 11+ hours the day before and so I picked up a couple of orders of oatmeal and we split a big breakfast. But McDonalds is rarely a place I go to for burgers anymore. Now it’s Five Guys.

Although one of the smaller burger chains, it’s clearly the best. The prom date was sick today and she spent much of her time in bed. So at dinnertime, it was clearly Five Guys and when I came back with the plain brown bag containing our burgers and fries, she was well pleased.

I first discovered Five Guys somewhere around Milwaukie, Oregon, where my son and his family live. I was on the way home and a little hungry and so I stopped and ordered a large fries. The cost was a little high, until I was handed a bag containing a 20-ounce cup of fries and they took two extra scoops and put that into a brown bag.

Now that’s a lot of fries. The serving will easily feed four adults. But the thing was, they were fresh. I mean these fries had never seen a freezer. On the floor were cartons of raw potatoes with a sign saying where the spuds were grown. Five guys employees run the potatoes through a French fry cutter. They don’t peel them so a lot of the fries have skin on them, which not only make them taste better, but the skin provides better nutrition.

Everything is fried in peanut oil, which is also less greasy and healthier too since it has no cholostrol. Now I’m not saying that fried foods are good for us, just that these fries are better than the ones you get out of a freezer at a fast food joint.

But it is now time to discuss the burgers. A burger is two third-pound patties, which have been freshly ground and hand shaped. The place does not have a freezer. You can also get a “junior” burger with one patty for about a dollar less. There’s an old advertising jingle for McDonald’s Big Mac – “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” But if you order a Big Mac, that’s what you get. With Five Guys, you choose your toppings ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, barb-b-que, hot sauce and A-1 sauce are the condiments, then the veggies include lettuce, tomato, green and jalapeño peppers, pickles, onions (raw or grilled), and mushrooms (again raw or grilled).

 

You can order whatever you want and if you want extra onions or mushrooms, for example, they’re all your’s  -- all included with the burger. And because the burgers are cooked fresh, they come out tender and juicy. Ever looked in the back kitchen at McDonald’s? They cook burgers in bunches and put them in heating bins. It just isn’t the same. Most fast food places also season their burgers. Five Guys has salt and pepper packages if you want the spice.

They also sell hot dogs; also with the condiments you want and grilled cheese, a veggie special grilled cheese and a BLT. Bacon on the burgers and dogs cost extra.

As for drinks, they also have home-spun shakes with about ten different flavors. I sometimes will have a cherry-strawberry-banana shake. But more often I will have a soft drink chosen from the more than 100 varieties from Coke’s advanced dispenser system. For example, Sprite Zero can be poured into your cup with lemon, cherry, orange and other flavors. Today I had a vanilla diet root beer.

Since everything is cooked to order, you have to sit around and they offer free peanuts in the shell while you wait.

I usually take out my meal, but there is a dining room. It’s nothing fancy, but there are plenty of seats and stools.

All I can say about this is that in more than seven years of blogging, I’ve never endorsed a place to eat (though I did once mention a great Florida juice stand). Simply put, check it out and you’ll find that instead of a ‘happy meal,’ you will find yourself quite happy with your meal.

Ike

The 34th
President lived rather modestly after finally retiring. He was the Supreme Allied Commander of our forces in Europe during the Second World War and the head of NATO forces after that. He “retired” to become the president of Columbia University until being the President of the United States.

The first time I heard of Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was in November 1952 when my mother took me inside the voting booth at our Upper West Side polling place. She voted for the other guy, Adlai Stevenson. Adlai was crushed – twice – becoming the Democrat's sacrificial lamb in 1956. 1952 marked the first time a Republican was president in three decades. And Ike, as everyone called him, was also wanted by the Democratic Party to be their nominee.

We recently toured the battlefield at Gettysburg and the Eisenhowers spent their last years at a farm near the site of that conflict. Ike, and his wife Mamie, had lived in an estimated 40 homes during his military career and had some rather fancy temporary housing for eight years in Washington DC. But the Gettysburg farm was the couple’s first and only home.

The home was rather modest. In fact, he had to write a book, Crusade in Europe, to afford to purchase it. I had read a first edition of the book about a quarter century ago from my mother’s estate. But alas, it has been lost.

We had a guide, another New York social studies teacher, who reminded me of some of the events of his Presidency, such as the Suez crisis. The Israelis, British and French invaded Egypt to gain control of the Suez Canal without Eisenhower’s knowledge. Ike was livid and had strongly warned Britain not to invade. He threatened serious economic damage unless the three invaders pulled out, including major financial damage to Britain’s economy. Historians say that the crisis signified the end of Great Britain’s role as a one of the world’s major powers. Egypt was allied with the Soviet Union at that time and the threat of a possible nuclear war was realistic. Yet in any high school history course, this crisis isn’t even mentioned. It drives me crazy that events I consider as touchstones in my lifetime, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the JFK assination, the 1968 assinations of Malcomb X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, Woodstock and the first lunar landing get so little attention. The wars in Korea and Vietnam have been consolidated into a day’s study of “the cold war era.”

But Ike’s role in history has been well established and I need not go any further into that. What I was astounded to discover was how ordinary and simple his home was.

When the Eisenhowers purchased the home circa 1950, the house was falling apart and had to be completely rebuilt. In fact, there was a colonial-era house found underneath the house. The couple built a small stone house next to the main brick house and then spent much time renovating the main house. But the house, when completed, was modest. The main living room was only slightly larger than most people’s living rooms. And the other rooms were all within the normal range. There are eight bedrooms, but two were allocated to a maid and an aide. In addition to the master bedroom, Ike had a smaller bedroom which doubled as a study.  What surprises me is that the home is so simple. Ike and Mamie spent a lot of time on the back porch, doing things most people did in that era. They watched black-and-white television. Ike loved westerns while Mamie was obsessed with the soap operas. There was a card table, and Ike loved to paint. The house has several of his paintings and it is estimated that about 250 paintings are in private circulation. Move into the bathrooms and you’ll see nothing special. A simple toilet, sink and bathtub were the mainstays throughout the house. The kitchen had appliances of the era, such as a mixer. The bedrooms had portable radios – large ones, many times the size of today’s alarm clocks. The beds were generally twin size.

About the only special thing in the house was some wallpaper Mamie had put in. It contained the great seals of every state. The pattern was a standard one offered by the manufacturer, and the company simply changed the background color to suit her tastes, which was usually a light pink.

It’s such a contrast to the way we view the homes of former presidents. The Clintons live in a mansion in an exclusive enclave outside New York City. The Bush families own a sprawling ranch. The Kennedy compound in Hyannis is large and isolated. But the Eisenhower family simply craved privacy. The farm had no identification that a former president lived there. Today, the driveway had a “do not enter sign at the street, but nothing to indicate the former president lived there. About the only concession to the life he led was a small Secret Service building next to a barn.

According to our guide, Ike loved to take visitors to the Gettysburg battlefield and he also had a small golf hole installed. But it was a working farm as he raised Angus cattle and frequently showed them.

Ike was a president who apparently cared more about what was right rather than himself. What a contrast to the very rich candidates of the election of 2016. Could you imagine The Donald or Hillary spending their time in a manure-laden barn instead of being full of bull?

Reunion

It’s been a long day and will be a short night. There is a gentle summer rain that should be lulling me to sleep. But I am too filled with joy and contentment. I have just attended the 50^th year reunion of the Ridge High School (Basking Ridge, NJ) Class of 1966.

Reunion is a funny word. it is not just a gathering of people who once knew each other, but the union part of the word indicates a bonding that once was and, from my perspective, still is.

I only spent half of my freshman year with this group of people, but I also was part of the class during middle school – 6^th through 8^th grades. And these people are very dear to me, possibly much more than my classmates at Morristown High School (NJ) where I graduated. This RHS class, numbering just over 100, was small. But their beauty was immense.

In previous years, I had gone to five schools and lived in 11 apartments in the four years since my parents separated. I lived with my mother, an alcoholic drama queen. The best way I could explain it was I had a mental breakdown by the time I was 12 years old. I wound up at Bonnie Brae Farm for Boys in Millington, NJ. The stability of having an ordered life and consistent treatment helped me to settle down while I attended the in-house school there.

About nine months later, I returned to the public school system while living at Bonnie Brae. Even though I had to repeat 6^th grade, it was OK. I had learned little in the previous school year and realized it was best for me. And so I spent the last few months in school with the children who eventually became the class of ’66. Those first few months, I felt very much like an outsider, as usual, because I not only was the new kid in school, but also a Bonnie Brae Boy. I had no idea what the “townies” thought of me, or any Bonnie Brae Boy during that time. I pretty much kept to myself, but there was absolutely no way I wanted to go back to the in-house school.

The Friday evening meet and greet

The next year I returned to the same school, with the same classmates. We moved from class to class with new teachers, rather than staying with one teacher. And the transition was smooth. I was with the same group of classmates for the first time in my life.

Slowly, very slowly, I came out of my shell as seventh grade began. And I started to learn things. Mr. Whittaker, my English teacher, spent endless days on sentence structure and diagramming. With that instruction, I was able to become the professional writer that was the backbone of my career. I became comfortable with my classmates. Eventually we began supporting one another with both life and schoolwork.

Then suddenly we were in Oak Street JHS and in the 8^th grade, a different building with some new teachers. But by now, I was comfortable with my classmates. My grades improved and I became involved in sports and clubs. I learned a little about soccer and played on the school team. I also played football and baseball. Suddenly, I was something of a class leader. I was in Mr. Koza’s camera club, and guess who later became a professional photographer? The social studies teacher, Mr. Mitchell, refused to take my BS and inspired me to teach that subject after a middle-life career change was forced upon me due to injuries.

But the most important thing was that I felt I was an important part of this group. I felt accepted.

And that was the year I discovered girls. 

After a few false starts with girls with whom we laughed about during the reunion, along came Valerie. It was kind of weird, the way I had discovered her. I had asked a couple of girls to a dance at Bonnie Brae.

A midday bar-b-que at a classmate's home. It ended just before torrential rains began.

The first girl I asked was with her BFF and I couldn’t get them separate. So I finally asked the girl and the BFF burst into laughter while the other girl, the object of my two years of unknown, unbridled affection, politely declined. This incident turned out to be a major factor in my life as I became extremely fearful of rejection for some time. The next girl I asked said her father would not let her date until she was 16. I thought she was just brushing me off but later learned it was true. The third girl said she would ask her parents, who said “no.”

Now you have to understand, these three girls were some of the most attractive in the class. I spoke to Mr. Persico, Bonnie Brae’s director, about it. He suggested I ask a girl who was a friend, not necessarily a pretty one. And so I asked Valerie. And she said yes. I felt glad I had a date for the dance, but somewhat apathetic because she seemed to be so plain.

But then came the night of the dance. Valerie, who didn’t primp too much at school, suddenly was an incredibly beautiful woman, drop-dead gorgeous, and perfection beyond belief. A dash of makeup with a beautiful dress with a modest neckline and an incredible hairdo made her the belle of the ball, though she didn’t realize it. There was a song by The Lettermen, a popular group at that time, titled “The Way You Look Tonight,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSsTguCePLk) that I considered “our” song, though I never told her that. But every time I hear it, I still remember that night when I discovered that girls were clearly the most wonderful things ever! When my son married his wife, I chose that song to play as I danced with her at the reception. 

And all my Bonnie Brae friends who saw Valerie agreed. A few days later we were hanging around the day room where we studied and played board games. They started an A cappella doo-wop song that began with: 

“Valerie, (Aaaaaaah)  oh my Valerie, (Oooooo)) Valerie, I love you so, so, so (so, oh, so)

And Valerie, (Oooooo) oh my little Valerie, (Aaaaaaah)  I just want you to know, (know, oh, know.)”

The lyrics continued with her being so fine and having kisses like wine; possessing eyes that sparkled in the night, etc.

It was, of course, what was then called “puppy love.” But the feelings, and hormones, were raging. But the thing was, when she said she loved me, I didn’t know how to respond. I really never had an example of it in my chaos-filled home life. I often wonder if I still don’t understand love. At that point, we hadn’t even kissed.

Through those elementary years, our music teacher was Paul Grossman. Several years after the class graduated, he had a sex change and became Paula Grossman. In recent years, trans people have become somewhat accepted. But at the time, even though she was tenured, the school board fired her. Sometime around 1973 I was working for the Dover Daily Advance newspaper and when I mentioned in the newsroom that she was my teacher in elementary school, I was sent to get an interview. After finding a 10-year-old Plainfield phone book (does anyone still use them?) I made contact and got an interview. Ms Grossman always had a great sense of humor in school and greeted me with “you’ve changed, but who am I to talk?”

And here we get serious. Bonnie Brae boys were accepted. Most of my classmates didn’t know we had juvenile records. For example, I was charged with B&E. I saw a baseball in the basement door where I lived and broke in to get it. Others ran with street gangs. Some were sexually abused and some, who never made it to public school, were sexual abusers. But the classmates treated us like equals. And it helped us incredibly. Mr. Grossman cast one of us, Jimmie Shields, as the lead of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta  -- something most of us Bonnie Brae boys marveled at. While we were always part of athletic teams and clubs, we were rarely thought of as having that kind of talent. We were proud of Jimmie, a gentle giant, albeit it a lonely one. When my father visited me every other week on Sunday, he hung out with us like a puppy wanting to be included.

And then I was a freshman. The previous years had strengthened my mind, body and soul. No longer did I feel like an outlaw and outcast. There I was, playing football, even if we were the worst freshman team ever. We never even scored. We only had about 15 boys start the season. That meant most of us had to play both ways. By the second quarter, we were usually exhausted as the teams we played against sometimes had two to three times as many players.

Top: 1963 yearbook photo of the freshmen team, Bottom, the RHS football field today posted by Joy Monroe. 

We got close to scoring once. After being behind by at least 40 points, we got near the goal line and the opposing coach put his starters back in and they stopped us. A small squad, we wound up with only eight players after injuries and our season was cancelled. Those who were left played a little with the jayvee team. But it was something we owned, and it united us.

Dinner is served at the reunion

I joined the music appreciation club and we even heard a song by some British group called the Beatles. We breezed through French I, having had three years of it in elementary school, but the guys paid little attention as the teacher was very beautiful. Algebra I was a little tough as we were taught learning the “new math.” RHS was only in its second year of existence. But all the teachers, most of whom were quite young then, were great people who cared. It was an experience where we learned from each other.

And then it was time to leave. On the day we broke for Christmas vacation, the people at Bonnie Brae told me it was time for me to go home to my mother. They said she had been sober, had a good job and a much better apartment. Well, I suppose two out of three weren’t bad. 

The next date I had with Valerie was at a youth nightclub run by a local Morristown church. My mother drove us between Morristown and Basking Ridge. It was a chance to simply talk and on the ride home, we were in the back seat and finally kissed well over a year since that incredible first date. But I discovered mom was driving drunk after letting Valerie off. I never wanted to risk Valarie, or any other person, again. From then on, I paid for taxis but I was so ashamed about my mother I didn't contact Valerie for nearly 50 years. 

Morristown High was very different. A class of more than 400 to start with, those from Morristown came in from several different elementary schools. Then there was another group from nearby Morris Plains, and yet another from Harding Township. When we were sophomores, yet another larger group from Morris Township joined us. These diverse groups formed all kinds of cliques even before entering high school. There were also groups based on religion and color. There were greasers and preppies. And I was the new kid. At Ridge, we were far more homogenous.

At Morristown, I never really fit into a niche. I did some sports, drama and debate. I never played football again because I blew my knee playing baseball and it wouldn’t hold up. The only sport I was any good at, swimming, was worse after the injury as my knee actually rattled when I was kicking.

I once visited a juvenile court judge and begged to go back to Bonnie Brae. But since I wasn’t committing any crimes, I couldn’t. My mother’s drinking prevented me from inviting friends into my house. I spent most of my evenings working to avoid her rantings; lifeguarding at the Y, ushering at the movies and delivering Chicken Delight instead of doing homework. I did not attend activities such as parties that I might have made friends in. I survived several courses simply by getting top grades only on final exams. In junior year history, I had the top grade in the entire school in the final and the teacher, who only lasted one year, wanted to give me a F for the year. Somehow, after screaming at the guidance department, I wound up with the only A I had in the three plus years I was at Morristown. I had made the honor roll several times in the Bernards Township system.

Despite having a recorded IQ of 132, I graduated 380^th out of 400 students. In the past five years or so, I have become much closer to my classmates than I was in those high school years.

I do not look back at the Morristown years with nearly the affection of my friends of my Bonnie Brae years, but the lessons they helped me learn then, and the support they gave me, probably meant the difference between a productive life and a life sentence.

I have been a professional writer, photographer, advertising executive, marketing manager and social studies teacher. I am the first in my family to graduate from college (with honors no less) and I even obtained a masters degree (magna cum laude).

I throughly enjoyed talking to many people and exchanging life stories. I didn't know many of the students because I left before they arrived at Ridge. I spent time talking to a Bonnie Brae Boy whom I knew only briefly even though we shared the same cottage. I simply came home late from school every day after practice and crashed into bed after dinner and homework. But talking to team mates and others was wonderful. Some of the people who were in my class had incredible lives.

I think my reunion experience was highlighted by a single moment that shows how much friendship means. One of the women, Joy, was best friends with Carol during 8th grade. But they had separated. Carol happens to be a dear friend and so I dialed her on my cell phone and handed Joy the phone. The two talked until the battery was nearly dead, and while I didn't listen to the conversation, Joy's joy went into orbit and I came home to a thank you note from Carol. Within a brief time, the two became Facebook friends.

I was saddened to learn of several friend's deaths.  Greg Noll, Donald Tucker, Jim Knox and Ross Bloom were team mates. Vicky Welch and Christine Jeffers were always very nice to me and died way too young.  I admired Tom Shoudy and Azlyade Mitchell, expecting them to be wildly successful. Suzanne Thomas and I became fast friends after an 8th grade co-ed basketball game after we both went for a rebound and became entangled with one another as we crashed to the floor. We were both teased about it after our hands wound up where they really shouldn't have been. 

Speech time. I had the honor to say a few words about how Bonnie Brae boys were welcomed

Friendship. I once heard a saying that real friends are the ones you don't see for years and are there the minute you need them. And so, to the Ridge High ’66 classmates I met at the reunion, and others from those days, thank you and I guess I finally learned how, and why, to say: “I love you.”