A Cheeseburger is Paradise

I turned outlaw during the third grade, a pint-sized desperado lured down a wicked path by a craving I couldn�t control.

Twice a week I left school pretending to walk home for lunch, which was permitted as long as you went home. But I didn�t. Instead, I ducked into a dimly-lit joint down the street. I couldn�t help myself, I was jonesing for the good stuff.

Soon as my tiny figure darkened the doorway, the man behind the counter knew what to do. He slapped a hamburger on the grill. That�s right, I had a cow on my back. I was hooked on burgers.

Let the other saps at school choke down a brick of institutional-grade meatloaf, I was feasting on a juicy little joy bomb, a sensory delight. Hamburger is just steak in comfortable clothes. It is a magic medley for the taste buds, the perfect union of meat and bun, exploding with flavor and crackling with condiments. It dazzles the palette with its simplicity, overpowers with charbroiled intensity.

Hamburgers swing. Always hip, always appropriate, fitting in at truck stops, cock fights or wedding receptions. Hamburgers are one of the first kid-friendly foods we encounter in life, compact and graspable. Not to mention they are the bane of picky eaters due to their utter mouth-wateringness.

Hamburgers rule. They knocked hot dogs off their popularity perch right after World War II and never looked back. Since then a wide assortment of gastronomic wannabes have come gunning for them -- pizzas, tacos, chicken parts -- but nothing can replace burgers, or even tarnish their sizzling image. Until now.

For weeks the beef industry has been ravaged by unrelenting reports of infectious bovine disease rolling in from across the pond. Experts assure us that for now, America�s beef supply is untainted but no one expects the firewalls to hold much longer. Since May is National Hamburger Month it seemed high time someone stood up for the beleaguered burger. If this is to be our final summer of beef-gorging innocence, we might as well kick out the jams.

Let someone else sing the praises of sirloin, filet mignon and crown roast. If you want to get gushy over tenderloin, prime rib and mountain oysters, more power to you. Maybe they all have their good points. But for me, the cow begins and ends with the most exquisite of foods, the penultimate patty, the coup de grease...the burger.

If you own a backyard grill, time to fire up that sumbitch. No doubt you already know your way around those savory little wheels of beefy tissue, so you don�t need any advice. Except maybe douse the flames just a smidge, you�re cooking the damn things, not cremating them. But for those who are sans grill, you need to locate a suitable burgerteria in your neck of the �burbs and pay homage to that savory sandwich.

Naturally, we are not talking about fast food establishments. Those antiseptic, soulless calorie distribution centers serve a purpose, but making your tongue swoon and your taste buds vibrate orgasmically with their assembly line repertoire is not one of them. So if you stumble into a place with warming lamps and microwaves and toys served as a side dish and kids swimming in a bacteria lagoon of colored plastic balls, just turn around and walk out fast.

What you want is a diner, a lunch counter or a greasy spoon. If the floor crunches when you take a step and you realize they don�t serve peanuts in the shell, chances are you picked a likely spot. If the cook�s T-shirt is so covered with grease stains you can give yourself a full-blown psyche evaluation by using them as a Rorschach test, you�re definitely on the right track. Bonus, if a non-filter cigarette dangles from the corner of his lip while he flips the patties. If the waitress, whose age you can only estimate to be between 40 and 200 repeatedly calls you "hon," welcome to burger heaven.

Everyone needs safe harbor from the small storms of everyday life, a place to put aside the multi-tasking, to unwind and regroup. Hamburger joints offer sanctuary. A burger is the king of comfort food because it�s a flashback on a bun. With the first bite you are transported back to a more innocent time when your world revolved around simple pleasures like cartoons, running fast down a hill for no reason and throwing rocks at someone you were totally crushing on, then refueling with a burger and shake.

So cast aside office woes and forget about your cholesterol for one glorious day. Find a hang-out where the burgers leap off the grill like trout from a stream, and let yourself be pampered by a spatula technician. Order a burger. Cheese it if you want. Bite into your delicious past.

Would you like fries with that?