Satellite Hamburgers

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Grab a Bite!

Long ago, food on demand meant Dad was in the garage yelling into the kitchen for Mom to fix him a sandwich. This era was way before Grub Hub or Uber Eats. Mom would call it the Neanderthal times. But the midcentury was not that long ago.

The 1950s was the dawn of fast food. Thank you, Ray Kroc, of McDonald's fame. Today, our hunger for convenience and immediate gratification accelerates like Pac-Man rushing through a maze, gobbling up little round dots and veggies.

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It was big news when the satellite landed on South Washington Street in Crawfordsville. Satellite Hamburgers, that is. All marketing, images, and names centered on the Space Program in the 60s. Good food, low prices, and service delivered faster than Sputnik were the promise. Fast and efficient was their motto. Burgers got grilled on the automated chain-linked conveyor belt. My CHS friends and I looked like Lucille Ball and Ethel Mertz trying to keep up on the candy factory episode of the I Love Lucy Show. We got pretty dad-gum fast but not all that efficient.

The night manager resembled the drill sergeant from the Gomer Pyle Series. He was ever ready to whip us into shape. As a burger exited the flame broiler, it dropped off the conveyer onto the bun. Before my co-worker, Bobbie could administer the secret sauce and put the bun on top, a misguided hairy moth flew onto the sizzling burger. Fearing the wrath of the drill sergeant, in the name of efficiency, Bobbie drowned the moth in the secret sauce and slapped the bun on top.

We didn’t miss a beat. The extra special moth burger continued down the speedy production line. We never heard a discouraging word about the super surprise order. Fortunately for us, fast–food Satellite Burgers were also consumed at warp speed, much too quick for discerning taste buds to reject the flavor.

Food service automation had not totally caught on for the French fry portion of the meal. Potatoes got washed and dumped into a five-gallon drum. They tumbled for a few minutes until the skins were peeled off by the coarse interior surface of the drum. Skinless, they awaited the manual slicer.

No one warned me that operating the potato slicer was a hazardous duty. The one-armed bandit looked innocent enough. Grab a spud. Stick it on the square grid blades. Reach up and pull the handle. Wala! Perfect French fry slices dropped into the basket. No one said, “Occasionally, you may get a bad potato.”

Did you know that potatoes rot from the inside out? When you apply pressure, they can explode like a rotten egg. With a hardy tug on the handle, I got slimed with a foul substance. A gag-a-maggot stench followed me for the rest of my shift.

It only took a week to realize I was not quite speedy enough for a career in fast-food prep. I hit the ejection button on the Satellite job.

I baled none too soon.

My next assignment was to be a close encounter with the volcanic French fryer.?

Story and Graphics by Chuck Clore