So yes, B is for Burger.
When I was growing up — back in the olden days — burgers were a treat. Yes, we ate them at home — or more accurately, my grandparents’ or great aunt’s homes when they were having picnic. We sometimes ate out, but that was definitely not a weekly occurrence. We went to HoJo’s on birthdays since the birthday person could then eat for free. Or maybe another restaurant, though I can’t remember much about that. Sometimes we ordered food when we went to the drive-in (as in movie) but that stuff was expensive, so we usually took our own snacks.
Our favorite treat places were the ones where we went for ice cream. Carvel’s for soft-serve or flying saucers.
Local Mom & Pop stands for scoops of frozen goodness made with fresh peaches or strawberries. Or Twin Kiss.
We may have had burgers or other sandwiches there, though not often. French fries to share if we were lucky, or a root beer float, but if not, a mug of root beer was certainly enough!
However, when I hit high school, those places met with new competition: the golden arches of McDonald’s. For a quarter we could buy a burger or a fish sandwich. And we could get it fast. And. . . This was the place that the guys from our high school found part time jobs. Not the girls, at least not that I knew of. There were some OLD ladies (I wonder how I’d see them nowadays) who worked there, especially during weekdays, but other than that, it was the guys. That really changed how often we went out and where.
Oh, we still went to Banks’ drug store. No, we didn’t buy burgers there, but we visited just about every day. You see, my best friend, Kathy, and I would skip lunch, saving the lunch money we had been given, and have the bus drop us at the corner of Union and Water Streets, and make our purchases. No, not drugs. They had a soda fountain and that’s where we bought our hot fudge sundaes made with mint chocolate chip ice cream — in cups to go — and a cherry coke and bag of Middleswarth barbecue chips. We’d tromp the two and a half blocks to Kathy’s house and devour our snack there.
Ok, Bank’s was a detour. I didn’t expect to write about that, had forgotten to add it to the list.
Back to Burger.
When I was growing up, the word “Burger” brought to mind something completely different. To me, that meant “Betty Burger.” I first ran into Mrs. Burger at church. She was probably one of my early Sunday School teachers. Maybe. Or maybe she wasn’t. She was definitely my kindergarten teacher. In those days there was no such thing as a public kindergarten. Not for many years after. Yes, the private schools offered classes. And the place to send a child for kindergarten was Phoebe Etter’s, which was only half a block from my home. But Mrs. Etter had a long waiting list and my parents didn’t get my name on the list in time.
Instead, I attended kindergarten at our church, First Church of God, which was even closer to my house than Mrs. Etter’s place. And Mrs. Burger was our teacher. I remember lots of things about kindergarten: the smell of fresh made play dough, that white paste may smell minty but tastes terrible, that the little wooden rocking boat/steps that is still used in preschools is ideal for acting out “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” I also remember that the boys in the class — especially Eddie — were in trouble more often than the girls.
Except for me. The boys may have been in trouble more often, but I was the one who got spanked. Yes, folks, in those days it was okay to spank a child. It only happened once and years later Mrs. Burger told me that I was the only child she had ever spanked. Great. What a distinction. And what was my infraction? I kept tipping my chair back on two legs. And she kept warning me. And finally she’d had enough and I was spanked for that. I never did it again. And I never (at least not so far) tipped my chair over backwards and fell.
The other trauma I remember from kindergarten was in the big assignment that all of us had: memorizing our name, address, and phone number. We met in the children’s Sunday School rooms, but for this Mrs. Burger took us one at a time to the adult Sunday School room — a huge and imposing room located just under the sanctuary — and had us recite our information. When we got it right for the first time, she gave us a Hersey bar — a full-sized one — to take home.
I got the name. I got the address. But I couldn’t get the phone number.
My friends returned from that room proudly clutching chocolate wrapped in a silver and brown wrapper. Not me. I returned with nothing. Again and again and again. At least, that’s the way I remember it. I finally got it right, but I still have trouble remembering phone numbers.
Those may seem like negative memories of Mrs. Burger, but they really aren’t. For the most part she was very supportive of us, all of us. And she cared about us.
And she cared about others as well. A few years later it was discovered that our church had termites. The building was condemned and we met at the old high school building next door until our new church was built. And in that new church, thanks to the persistence of Mrs. Burger, there were two special education classrooms, an educable and a trainable room (yes, that’s how they were classified at that time). This was something no one else was doing, something none of the other churches had. Pretty special, eh?
So yes, B is for Burger. Not a bad thing to be.
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