Want Food Fast? Here's Fast Food

By Paul Gray

Tires hum along the interstate while an afternoon sun reddens behind exhaust fumes. The natives in the back seat are restless. Bored with counting stalled vehicles and CB radio antennas, they have discussed Star Wars to a tatter. The day's second rendition of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall has petered out at bottle No. 37. Now sullen silence prevails, punctuated only by stage whispers to the effect that some parents feed their kids, for cryinoutloud. Egg McMuffined for breakfast, Burger Kinged at lunch and Stuckeyed in between, the little ones are hungry again. For that matter, Mom and Dad deserve another break today. A pit stop is called for. Time to eat and run.

No leisurely backyard picnic for this hypothetical family--or for the millions of real ones who will take to the nation's highways this summer. They want food fast, and fast food they get. The old poetry of the open road --scenic vistas, empty spaces, serendipity--has been drowned out by a new beat:

Shakey 's Pizza, Tastee Freez,

A&W, Hardee's,

Howard Johnson, Red Barn,

Blimpie,

House of Pizza, Big Boy,

Wimpy,

Wendy's, Friendly's, Taco

Titos, Sandy's, Arby 's, Los Burritos.

Millions of stay-at-homes will dance to this same rhythm. To them, summer supper does not mean a familial gathering around the groaning board, with Granny presiding over steaming tureens of garden-fresh vegetables. It means a quick take-out order from the local Kentucky Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut, with plenty of potato chips and soft drinks to stave off the pangs until Dad carts the meal home. The kitchen is where the wrappings are thrown away.

The terms vary: fast food, road food, convenience food, service food or (to the distaste of its producers and the grim delight of its detractors) junk food. Whatever it is called, America's infatuation with such fare is nothing new. The hot dog made its debut on these shores over a hundred years ago; a recognizable version of the modern hamburger was unveiled at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. But sophisticated new marketing and advertising techniques, computer technology and entrepreneurial zeal have whetted a nationwide hunger of apparently limitless depths.

New fast-food outlets, typically emphasizing limited menus and rapid turnover, sprout on highways, city boulevards and small-town streets like mushrooms (which they often architecturally resemble). For every dollar spent on food eaten away from home, an estimated 40-c- goes to fast-food emporiums. The total sales this year are expected to reach $20 billion. McDonald's, the giant of the industry, will very soon sell its 23 billionth hamburger. A Texas chain called Church's Fried Chicken uses up 37 million pickled jalapenos per year. In 1976 the 700-plus units of Taco Bell consumed 1 million tons of beef--and that is a modest amount by the standards of McDonald's or Burger King.

All the multiple-digit statistics simply confirm what the smell of fat frying across the land has long made clear. Americans in massive numbers daily ignore the hand-wringing of nutritionists, the sneers of gourmets and the prickings of their own consciences. For them, fast food takes the worry out of being hungry. A first visit to an outlet of an unfamiliar chain may cause some anxiety and confusion; dazzling permutations on the basic hamburger, bearing odd, hyped-up names, take some time to master, much less understand. But a snack that hits the spot on one day is likely to do so every day, thanks to tight control of quality and portion size by the large chains. Familiarity with fast food does not, apparently, breed contempt.

To those who find formal restaurants intimidating and expensive, the in-and-out eateries are godsends. No snooty headwaiters, no discomfort over which fork to use; the teen-agers who always seem to be taking orders at the counter are chipper as Munchkins. At many roadside stands the food may indeed be cheap, but it is also inexpensive. Tests have shown that it would cost about two-thirds of the menu price to duplicate some fast-food meals at home. Factor in cooking labor and clean-up time, not to mention the absence of such fillips as special sauces or eleven secret herbs and spices, and the difference in price seems negligible.

Some junk food richly deserves that name, although it must be remembered that one man's meat is another man's corndog (a wienie impaled on a stick and dunked in a bubbling cornbread batter). But much prepacked or rapid-fire fare simply tastes better than the meals Mom used to make--when Mom's was the clapboard greasy spoon tucked invitingly along the two-lane highway, with three cars parked in front, all bearing out-of-state plates. Critics like to claim that the major chains are taking the adventure out of eating, that motorists are settling for Colonel Sanders instead of discovering the modest little boardinghouse that makes the best quiche Lorraine this side of Provence. True, perhaps, but one reason drivers keep turning to the finger-lickin' chicken is that they have been burned so often at Mom's and similar places. Restaurant surprises disappoint far oftener than they delight.

Charges that fast-food uniformity is turning the U.S. into the land of the bland should not be swallowed. A Big Mac may be a Big Mac wherever one roams, but in the interstices of the chains a Petronian diversity of foodstuffs is being sold with dispatch. On the Fourth, New Englanders will be flocking to Clam Shacks for rolls stuffed with batter-fried whole quahogs or steamers. Sightseers in Plains, Ga., will stop at the Americus outlet of McWaffles, which puts peanuts in the batter and serves "the Presidential Waffle" with a side order of peanut butter.

Floridians who know what to look for will find one of the converted gas stations that sell Apalachicola oysters on the half shell. In Los Angeles the proliferating Mexican food stands will turn out not just tacos but also burritos, chorizos, carnitas and menudo (a milky-white soup made from the lining of a cow's stomach). In Washington, D.C., there will be baklava at Hector's and crepes ratatouille at the Magic Pan; in Manhattan, bagels at one of the Bagel Nosh eateries or souvlaki and gyros vended from pushcarts and holes in the wall; in Tucson, fruit ices at Egees.

And everywhere: hamburgers, hot dogs, submarines, fried chicken, chili, fish and chips, French fries, ice cream, doughnuts, pancakes, pretzels, milkshakes, malts, sherbet, soft drinks that fizz when they are opened and then again after they are swallowed and then again long into the evening. Fast food is now truly ubiquitous in American life. Even those who want no part of it cannot avoid hearing its advertising, seeing its installations or smelling its aromas wherever crowds gather to relax or be amused.

Public deplorers often turn out, under close questioning, to be private enjoyers. To Americans over 30 the glut, the avalanche of fast food may seem the miraculous fulfillment of childhood fantasy. They were raised when Popeye was touting spinach and it was everyone's duty to finish his vegetables. Three square meals a day were just that --square--and Mom's idea of dessert was a banana. French fries, of course, were too greasy, snacks ruined the appetite and sweets caused healthy teeth to decay overnight. How did the adults that these children eventually became respond when the forbidden fruits of their youth began dropping down like hot dogs from heaven? Some ignored the temptation, but millions of others took on a secret vice and happily said, "Pass the mustard."

What of today's children, who can be forgiven for assuming that food grows in cardboard boxes or cellophane bags and that, like trees, hamburger stands sprout naturally from the ground? Will they rebel against the eating habits of their parents ("Aw, Ma, not pizza again!") and turn back to slow food when they grow up? A tiny portent can be seen just above fast food's flashing horizon. Concessionaires in several parts of the country are doing a brisk trade in an unusual item: fresh, ice-cold apples.

A futuristic vision of history coming full circle. The scene is a stretch of highway, just before the Last Exit to the Fruited Plain. Cars creep along, the occupants peering out at the small, tasteful signs that front a succession of dimly lit establishments. "There's an 'EsCARgot,'" Father says. "What do you say we take four or five hours and dig into some snails?" A teen-age girl in the back seat protests: "I wanna go to a 'Fuzz.' Yummy peaches and cream, with none of the trimmings." Mother interjects: "I was rather hoping for an eight-course Chinese banquet." Suddenly, up ahead looms a neon trapezoid whirling on a huge pole and beneath it, in glowing magenta letters eight feet tall, the words SQUAT 'N' GOBBLE. "That," says the youngest child, "is the place for me."

Paul Gray

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