Hurl
I
I saw the biggest mouths of my generation devouring double bacon blue cheese
burgers and large curly fries, slurping thirty-two-ounce colas and Dr.
Peppers,
dribbling mustard, ketchup and relish on themselves and looking like a food
fight,
hip-heavy lard-asses, barely able to reach for another handful of nachos or
Fritos off the tray table between them and the large-screen TV,
who blew most nights, bleary-eyed after a few brews, tuned into back-to-back
reality shows, contemplating only the commercials for fast food and take-out,
who watched the wrestling federation on TV to see the swaggering and
staggering of beefed-up blowhards, and believed this is reality,
who demolished, in one round, a half-gallon of rocky road or double chocolate
chunk ice cream while dreaming of the banana splits of their youth,
when a movie meant a jumbo tub of buttered popcorn and a box of Junior Mints,
Milk Duds, Dots or Sno-Caps,
when school-day lunches embraced bologna, or peanut butter and jelly, on
white Wonder Bread, and one Hostess cupcake,
when breakfast was a cold bowl of Sugar Pops or Frosted Flakes (before Cocoa
Puffs and Cap'n Crunch, before Pop-Tarts and Toaster Strudels),
Jello-bellied bozos sprawled out in La-Z-Boy recliners, reaching for a Rolling
Rock, Miller or Coors (not Moosehead, Amstel or Pacifico but a Made-in-
the-USA American beer), roly-poly porkers, open-mouthed and insatiable,
who hungered after foot-long, ball-park hot dogs (with the works) and a whole
mess of chili fries or monster burgers and thick milkshakes,
who carried home cartons of fried chicken pieces, potato salad and sweet biscuits
or square, wired boxes of egg rolls and lo mein,
who listened impatiently for the pimple-faced pizza delivery boy, his tires
squealing as he took the corner of your cola-colored street,
who broke down crying over the down-home pulled-pork barbecue sandwich
the local firemen cooked up as a fundraiser,
which reminded them of when they were hungry and lonesome in Lexington,
North Carolina ("Barbecue Capital of the World"),
or when they were hustling after sales of medical supplies to proctologists from
Pontotoc, Mississippi ("Land of Hanging Grapes") to Beaver, Oklahoma
("Cow Chip Capital of the World") and they ate on the run,
or when they were between jobs in Birmingham ("The Pittsburgh of the South")
and survived on pork and beans—
ah, Fatty, those were the days when white bread was king and SpaghettiOs were
as international as food would get,
when you trusted in Twinkies outlasting a nuclear blast and having a shelf life of
a thousand years.
II
What kind of food pyramid wouldn't include pork rinds, powdered donuts
and mass-produced pastries?
Ho Hos and Ding Dongs! Schoolchildren screaming into their Clarabell the
Clown lunch boxes!
Ho Hos and Ding Dongs! Hardly the size of your Snow White birthday cake or
Mom's apple pie!
Ho Hos! Ho Hos! The hullabaloo and hysteria of Ho Hos! Ho Ho the headliner
of brown-bag lunches!
Ho Hos whose humble cylinder looks like a smokestack! Jumping Jehosaphat,
Batman! like a chocolate-frosted chimney! like the black barrel of a pistol
in the hand of a clown seconds before it fires the small flag that reads
BANG!
Ho Hos whose pinwheel heart, when bitten into, is squishy and sweet, is pie-in-
the-face cream! Ho Hos whose name is a hymn to sitcoms and slapstick,
to practical jokers and the punch line!
III
Fatty Fatty Boomalatty! I'm with you in the Food Court
where you're blubberier than I am
I'm with you in the Food Court
where the aroma of onion rings
k.o.s any odor of burritos and enchiladas
I'm with you in the Food Court
where Julio Menear mixes Mongolian stir-fry
and Cesar d'Arancia serves Orange Julius
I'm with you in the Food Court
where the women wearing head scarves
scarf up kosher hot dogs
I'm with you in the Food Court
where the two breasts of a woman bending over
one of the thirty-three flavors of ice cream
bounce under her blouse when she
reaches down and scoops
I'm with you in the Food Court
when the fries turn cold and you walk out
to discover how the moon is shaped like a large Tums waiting in the night
