This time tomorrow, I'll be sick. This is typical of my species. I'm a midwesterner returning to the midwest, and like a salmon returning to the place of its birth, tonight around midnight I will invariably issue the edict that will be my gastrointestinal undoing: "A dozen sliders, please."
Chicago. White Castles. Their cheeseburgers are all I'm thinking about this morning. Wait. I just thought about a stuffed pizza. Okay, it's White Castles again. Their siren song has led me to many sleepless nights in cheap motels.
If you're not from one of the twelve regions White Castle serves, you won't understand. The lucky twelve hasn't changed since I was a kid. They printed them on the side of the slider box, and in my youth, I memorized them: Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Louisville, Nashville, New Jersey, New York, St. Louis.
What's seven times six? Let me get back to you. What was the name of the court house in Appomattox? I dunno. Do they have White Castles in Philadelphia? No, you have to drive to Jersey.
On Football Weekend last year, Carolina native Bubba had his first White Castle, at a gas station outside Ann Arbor. He was not impressed. His reaction was rather like mine to boiled peanuts, in his part of the world, years earlier. "People with other options eat this slimy crap?"
Yes we do. Sure, the ingredients are sub-school-cafeteria-grade, but the meat and bun and onions are steamed the way God intended. A dozen sliders, please. Hold the remarks.
Here's a photo of my rental car during Super Bowl week. The blue and white bags? Sliders.