Time fries…

It’s been two months since my last French fry.

I remember it well. An upgrade to a two-for-one burger special.  I was sitting not more than 15 yards from the fryer. It was served up hot and crunchy, accented with ketchup, washed down with a tall draft beer.

Memories…

It’s an inconvenient thing, this pandemic. So many things we’d taken for granted have been taken away and we’re not knowing when we’ll be getting them back. Things like hot, crunchy French fries and cold draft beer.

Oh, in my case at least, the worst I can come up with is a small collection of first-world complaints. I’ve surely not gone hungry. If anything eight weeks of COVID shutdown has left my profile more rounded than before thanks to a kitchen well equipped with stove and fridge amply served by several well-stocked grocers no more than a mile or so distant. It was my lasting fortune that Mom started teaching me to cook well before Mrs. Baker started teaching me to read and I’ve had a lifetime to practice and refine both skill sets.

Still, I miss that French fry.

Now it’s not that I couldn’t make one for myself. There’s really not much to a French fry beyond potato, hot fat and a dusting of salt. If I had the want-to it wouldn’t take long to whip up a batch of pomme frites right there in my own kitchen. Of course, that would leave my whole house smelling like a deep fryer for the better part of a week – a high price to pay for a strip of deep fried potato. Some things are best left to the professionals.

Like pizza. Just buying the ingredients and working the dough makes even your average pie a costly mess to assemble and since there’s no way a kitchen range can duplicate the blistering heat of a brick-lined, slate-bed professional pizza oven even the best domestic effort is pretty much bound to be sub-par. 

For that matter, even if I usually have a can of kraut in my cupboard, if I get a hanker for a Reuben odds are against having stocked a fresh loaf of Russian rye, much less corned beef, swill and a bottle of thousand island.

So, for the duration, I do without.

Yeah, I know, there’s carry out available, but truth be told, I’ve never been much of a carry-outer. Call me fussy if you like, cuz I guess I am. When it comes to food, I want to eat it when it’s at its best. Packing the finest meal into a Styrofoam clamshell and toting it through traffic to my accustomed spot at the kitchen table just isn’t the same as a water hustling a steaming plate direct to my table along with an offer to bring another fresh, cold beer. The sad truth is that there’s no culinary Viagra to restore carry out fries or take the wilt out of lettuce steamed in transit.

So, along with everyone else, I wait for the virus to abate. I’m not happy about it and I’m fearful that once the plague has gone away it may have taken my favorite diners and saloons along with it. I know cooks, waiters and tavern-keepers are having a hard time of it, harder, I dare say, than many of us, and hope that the future will see them again made whole.

But beyond any political posturing the reality remains that we are dealing with a massively infectious disease that in a matter of weeks has claimed the lives of more Americans than live in La Crosse and Winona combined. And the that toll has not begun to decline.

We’ve gone two months without French fries, without haircuts … those of us who are still alive, that is. We haven’t lost our freedoms, we’ve just helped some friends and family stay healthy and alive.

And when it’s finally over, those French fries are gonna taste really good.