Oy! It’s Monday Sunday again, but at least it’s not raining in Chicago. It’s also May 15, the Ides of May, and on this day in history there were big doings, for in 1940 McDonald’s opened its very first branch in San Bernardino, California. Now there are over 35,000 branches in 118 countries. How many of you American readers have never eaten there? Can we find even one?
Note the limited menu. I can remember when burgers, fries, and a soft drink were 15¢ each.
Those born on this day include Pierre Curie (1859) and Mary Lyon (1925), the English biologist who proposed that, in mammals, one X chromosome in females was inactivated randomly in cells, simultaneously explaining the phenomena of tortoiseshell cats and Barr bodies. And, on this day in 1886, Emily Dickinson died at age 56.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a funny:
Hili: What do you associate renewable energy with?
A: Wind, sun, waves…
Hili: You see, and for me it is birds.
She’s very cute by the Vistula:
Hili: Z czym ci się kojarzy energia odnawialna?
Ja: Z wiatrem, ze słońcem, z falami morskimi…
Hili: No widzisz, a mnie z ptakami.
Required to be leashed when outside, Gus sometimes makes a big mess in his wanderings, like the example of “cat’s cradle” below:
Finally, reader Diana MacPherson sent this, which may be real:
It’s Sunday!
Thanks for setting my world in balance again…I was beginning to doubt.
I was almost afraid I may have really overslept today!
Clearly this retirement thing is too grueling for Jerry. Perhaps a visiting professorship at Liberty University’s biology department?
Jerry, how far to the office did you get before you realised it’s Sunday? Hopefully your route to church isn’t in the opposite direction (!)
“Can we fine even one?” Hmm, not sure if that’s a typo, or severe disapproval of folk frequenting McDonald’s,
Chris G.
My English teacher from high school didn’t know “to fine” was a verb. Cringeworthy.
I made it to the office after showering and dressing, and didn’t realize it was Sunday until I read the comments above. Well, now that I’m here, I might as well work. . .
We all do analogous things from time to time. I once got all the way to UBC and my office when I lived in Vancouver (30 minute bus ride) before I realized I’d left my glasses at home …
Forget about Americans who have not been to a McDonald’s, maybe anywhere. They would have one on the moon if there were any customers. The franchise as a business method is the interesting item.
My d*g frequently makes cat’s cradles when tied out. It’s rather embarrassing.
What I take from the McSludgeburger photo is their bold claim that the only use “Government Inspected Beef,” and it’s implication that other burger joints, restaurants etc weren’t using GI-beef, and that the difference mattered.
I know there’s a parasite associated with pig meat – same one in bear meat IIRC. I can’t remember one particularly associated with beef. There was always bovine TB, of course, but I thought the main vector for that was unpasteurised milk.
Unpasteurised milk is making a come-back, BTW – the anti-vaxxers will probably pick up on it soon and promote it as being natural. TB comeback in the mid-2020s? Though separating the milk-born forms from the extensively dug resistant forms will be hard on the epidemiologists.
Damn – don’t like this keyboard. “extensively DRUG resistant.
And of course, the fact that I don’t know much about beef-born parasites is in itself a mute testimony to the effectiveness of “big government” meat inspection and agricultural regulations. We all know how effective the free market was at preventing food-born parasites and adulteration before the deadening hand of “big government”.
Waiting for Trump to promise to do away with that sort of useless regulation. Anyone care to try to prompt him to do it – to see if he really is that stupid?
At least Trump doesn’t seem as ideologically dedicated to such arrogant stupidity as Rand Paul or Paul Ryan, who strike me as hellbent on creating a corporate-theocracy. No laws except for whatever benefits the propagation of religious dogma and whichever corporations donate heavily to Republican campaigns.
See – it’s like “Web 2.0” : “Democracy 2.0” one dollar, one vote.
And yes, it is only a few decades since Britain removed the property-owner trick for buying extra votes. They tried to bring it back with the poll tax, but even the Tories couldn’t make that stick.
Huh, I was reading Julius Caesar last night, and didn’t even realize that today was the Ides.
The Roman way of keeping dates is always a little weird to us. Wikipedia goes over it.Often they marked years by who was a consul at the time and time since some big event.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Months
The url above is also useful. The ides of a month isn’t always the 15th.
Romans and their annoying lunar calendar! 🌜🌛
Yes, but remember that today is the Ides of May, while Caesar died on the Ides of March. Every month has Ides. In March, May, July, and October they are on the 15th. In all other months, they are on the 13th.
I should have reloaded the page before commenting, to avoid being redundant.
Awwww Gus is so cute sitting on the box.
Jerry – Merilee sent the toilet paper joke.
In which direction was the notice attached to the roll – over or under?
Oh, my bad. Thanks, Merilee!
I don’t remember when McDonald’s first came to the San Francisco Bay area (specifically, around Redwood City), but I do remember a number of chains offering $0.21 burgers and, eventually, one at $0.13 in the mid-1950s. As I recall, the meat was a bit hard to find and/or identify. And I remember a Flip Wilson joke about getting his prices even lower as soon as he got the steamroller fixed.
I remember when McDonalds came to my town. It was just four years ago!
I have had coffee at McDonald’s and sometimes I get fries or their so-called “hash browns,” but I have never eaten a McDonald’s hamburger or any sandwich or other item.
As a teenager, I worked at the first McDonald’s to open in Canada. They had only been open a couple of days. Hamburgers were 17¢ and fries were 15¢. We made the fries from baker’s #1 large potatoes; peeling, cutting, rinsing, blanching and cooking them each day.
There could be 8 window positions open and when a promotion was on, the lunch and dinner line-ups at each window would be 10 or 20 customers deep. There could be as many as three sets of 24 burgers on the grill at one time, when they were going full out.
The whole restaurant came up from the States in pre-made modules and everything was standardised. I remember when there was still just the one store, the manager commented that they couldn’t get any of the major local bakeries to make buns to the McDonald’s specification. In a couple of years, when there were 10 stores and more were on their way, the bakeries who missed out might have regretted their choice. About that time the Tidballs sold their franchise to McCan Corp.
It was always exhilarating to join with the other experienced workers at the opening of a new store and really show how fast the food could move. Good times.
Interesting reminiscences, thanks for that. 🙂
Wait — you mean today’s still Sunday? Then why am I pretending to work!?
…and while I can’t claim to have never eaten (if that’s the word) at McDonald’s, it would be fair to describe their overall lifetime contribution to my diet as, “homeopathetic.” There was a field trip in high school many moons ago, and one or two cups since then of an hot brown liquid in a cup with the word, “coffee,” written on it….
b&
From a purely historical perspective: I wonder if the “orange-ade” (interesting spelling) is the same orange drink I remember at McDonald’s sponsored events in my childhood (e.g., the Terry Fox Run). Do they still have that, anyway?