It’s hard to imagine Canberra without Lake Burley Griffin. It was the main feature of the winning entry in the competition for the design of the new capital city, but it took fifty years for it to become reality. For most of its existence, Canberra was a sleepy little country town with a provisional Parliament House in a sheep paddock, and roads leading down to wooden bridges spanning the slow-moving Molonglo River.

Depression, World War Two and the fact that most of the public service remained in Melbourne and Sydney kept Canberra small, until the Sixties when rapid growth really began. New suburbs were laid out, the National Library and the Royal Australian Mint were built and the place just mushroomed.

In keeping with the modern buildings and their fresh architecture, money was poured into landscaping and parkland. The shores of the future lake were defined and built up, high level bridges over the Molonglo erected to complete the geometry of the Parliamentary Triangle, and Scrivener Dam raised in a narrow part of the river valley down past Government House.

Came the big day when the dam was complete, the band played, the Minister for Territories pressed the button, the floodgates were lowered and the crowd rushed to the side to peer over.

Trouble was that it had been a severe drought for months, the Molonglo was just a trickle and absolutely nothing happened. Not that day, not the next, nor the week after. In fact, for months on, there was no lake. Just a dusty expanse.

Then there came a flood, just as the organisers of the long-scheduled inaugural Canberra Regatta were wringing their hands and tearing their hair out. Overnight the lake filled and has been that way ever since.

It completed Canberra. Made it into a showcase of parks and great buildings reflected in the water. An almost symmetrical body of water in an almost symmetrical city. The even-sided cone of Mount Ainslie rising over the long land axis stretching down from Parliament House.

On and exit ramps came looping off the two big bridges. Bowen Drive curls around under the Kings Avenue Bridge, following the shoreline east, gracefully curving off towards Kingston. Here is a little area of grassland, a toilet block, a carpark and a few barbecues. A place for weekend picnics and fishing. Swans gather to be fed, Cyclists whiz past on their exercise runs and lovers stroll hand in hand.

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The encounter

As a Canberra night cabbie, the locations of all the late night food vans are well known to me. Two in Philip, one each in Tuggeranong, Woden and Belconnen, and Civic has one that only ever operates during Summernats when the big yellow double decker bus permanently parked on Girrawheen Street comes to life.

I’ll sometimes pull in at the end of a shift feeling peckish for a half bag of chips and gravy. A sinful treat of fat and salt. Passengers coming back from a night out direct me in, ordering burgers or chiko rolls. Junk food and coke.

So when I saw the red van in Bowen Park, lit up late one Friday night, I pulled in. There were a crowd of people lined up, and I studied the menu as I waited. Seemed a little sparse, and when I got to the front, I ordered “Just chips and gravy, please!”

Brodburger red van in Bowen park

“We don’t do gravy.”

“Oh. Um.”

“We do aioli. Homemade.”

“Aioli?”

“It’s a sauce, made of garlic and egg and olive oil.”

The aioli and chips was okay, I guess, but it wasn’t that salty, greasy gravy that instantly ruins a white shirt if you drip it.

Over the months, the little red burger van gained a devoted following. There would always be a long queue and a crowd. Not what a cabbie in a hurry needs for fast food.

The burger

My second meal at Brodburger came recently. That stage of the evening when the afternoon rush has died down and I’m thinking of dinner. Usually something quick and healthy. Subway, a burrito, a kebab. Maybe a curry on Friday, when it’s late night shopping in Civic.

But I was on the way to Kingston, I glanced across, and when I saw only a couple of diners lined up for their food, I hung a U-turn and drew into the car park.

As it happened, about a month previously I’d driven Joelle Bou-jaoude to the van after she’d made an emergency dash home for more change. My cabbie heart went out to her – so many times I was down to just a few big notes and small coins, and one more fifty-dollar note would wipe me out!

She looks every bit as good in the flesh as she does in the logo, I’m here to say! She smiled as she told me they’d just introduced a new product: a Brod steakburger. “Best steak. Really popular!”

So, as I lined up at the window, I knew exactly what I wanted.

“Steakburger, please!”

“How do you want it?” The chap serving was Sascha Brodbeck himself. Gourmet chef running a little red food van.

Joelle Bou-Jaoude

“Ummm, medium, I guess.”

There was a snort of derision from inside the van. Well, I like my meat a bit brown on the outside, okay?

“What cheese would you like on it?”

“What are the choices?”

“Swiss,” Sascha began. “Brie…”

Brie! On a burger! Oh wow!

“…or blue vein.”

By now I was swooning. “Blue, please!” I stammered.

Sascha warned it would take a while, so I wandered off for a look around. The van was connected to the electricity and water via a temporary arrangement at the rear. Beside it was the concrete toilet block. A few metres away a flock of swans gathered on the water, grey cygnets floating warily between hungry parents. I resolved not to eat at the water’s edge, lest a long swan neck reach up and grab my meal!

A pricey snack at $12.50, or $9.00 for a normal beef patty burger. But when I got mine, it was well worth it. Easily worth a couple of Whoppers.

Several slabs of steak, beautifully cooked tender and tasty, dripping with melted blue cheese and aioli. A generous allowance of rocket, tomato slice, red Spanish onions, chunky tomato relish. All on a soft golden bread roll.

No plate, no tables. Just a paper bag and a liner. I photographed the burger on the cab bonnet, and settled down in the front seat to consume my handy feast.

Some burgers rely on quantity for their value. Or the variety of ingredients. Much as I like pineapple, bacon, cheese, pickles, tomato and egg piled high for a huge calorie fix, my Brodburger was exactly right on the quantity and variety. Not too heavy, not too unwieldy.

Just right. The perfect mix of homemade ingredients, freshly prepared and simply presented. I was licking the last juices from my happy fingers when my next radio job came in, and I was on the road again.

I’ll be back.

The rage

Canberra is a city of public servants. All the government departments moved their central offices into purpose-built headquarter buildings during the Sixties and Seventies. In the decades since, the increasing power and centralisation of the federal government has seen a massive increase in population and government jobs.

Canberra is also a city of politicians. Initially administered by public servants, the place prospered. It was intended as a planned, garden city showcase, and when I arrived in the mid-Eighties, it was a true wonder. The world’s ultimate suburbia, the houses were all on big blocks, freeways connected the satellite towns, there were generous stretches of parkland and nature reserve, each suburb had schools, shops, churches and apartment blocks in the centre.

People complained it was all very sterile, but I was enchanted. I had found a beautiful city full of educated, cultured people that wasn’t crowded and busy. Peak hour, people said, lasted a minute. The government built the infrastructure first, before the residents of a new suburb moved in. My father-in-law, a civic engineer, was amazed at the high standards. “The cycle paths,” he exclaimed, “are built to the same specifications as one of our highways. They will never wear out!”

It was a grand place to live. Then the politicians decided that the city would be best served by self-government. Instead of various federal departments running the territory, the residents would elect politicians to a Legislative Assembly, raise taxes and pay for all the services.

Twice the residents rejected a referendum on self-government. The place worked fine just as it was. Why should we pay for a bunch of politicians, their staffs and a whole new layer of government?

But the feds forced it on us. The first few elections were shambles, with the No Self-Government Party attracting a lot of support. Sadly, not enough support to form a government. The Sun-Ripened Warm Tomato Party was also popular.

The predictable result has been a top-heavy administration. A State government to run a city. A smallish city of 350 000 inhabitants today after two decades of growth since self-government. Standards have fallen, money is wasted, taxes have risen.

The all powerful National Capital Development Commission has vanished, replaced by the local government planners. The essential federal lands of the Parliamentary Triangle are run by a rump: the National Capital Authority, which is more like three men and a dog seeking relevance.

Right. So when Sasha Brodberg wanted to set up a gourmet restaurant on wheels, he applied to the local government and was granted a hawker’s licence, like those given to the other semi-permanent food vans. These vans might shift their location once a decade.

He settled on the otherwise empty Bowen Drive. A heavy flow of passing traffic, a pleasant park by the lake, access to amenities. A good site, and the steady increase in customers was testament to his wisdom.

One day the National Capital Authority woke up to the fact that he was effectively permanently camped on land they controlled, and his little red food van wasn’t quite the structure they wanted to see there. They served him notice to decamp.

Technically speaking, they were in the right. The cinder-block public convenience beside the van was fine. It had been planned and built to a solid, if unimaginative, standard. The van itself, if it was to be a permanent fixture, wasn’t suitable for the national capital infrastructure.

But the Brodburger van is a finer fixture than any of the other six late-night food vans. It’s neater and cleaner, a gourmet food outlet serving the nearby yuppies.

It’s far more useful and sightly than the so-called Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a nearby eyesore in the heart of the Parliamentary Triangle denying a solid slab of prime parkland to the general community for the past twenty years. But that’s political, and no government body wants to evict a bunch of squatters.

Far easier to attack the popular and useful little red food van. Notice was served, and the final eviction will be mid 2010.

Community outrage against the bureaucrats has been strong and heartwarming. Everybody loves the Brodburger van and wants it to remain precisely where it is. A petition with about a bazillion signatures is available for signing, there have been letters to the editor, debates on community forums. Even the Chief Minister, scenting the public mood for an upcoming election, has lent his support.

I’ll update this post in due course. Will the bureaucrats triumph? Or will common sense prevail to keep the best burgers in the Australian Capital Territory available to an adoring public?

–PeterMac

Resources

• The official Brodburger site
• Canberra talking Brodburger on the RiotACT site
• The Brodburger FaceBook page
• Burgerator.com review
• The Canberra Times article
• National Capital Authority (silent on Brodburger)

Related posts:

1. Song of America

No. Now there’s a blog for the Trader Joe gourmet.

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Mrs Josie and her French irregulars have helped me out here and there, but truth to tell, I know as much German and Italian and Dutch as French, nowadays, and all rolled together they barely get me a snort and a snigger when I order a beer.

Belgium, and lunch wasn’t quite as easy as we thought. None of us had much in the way of Euro left after Germany, and we either needed some place that would take cards, or an autoteller so that we could draw out further supplies.

We stopped to fill up at an odd service station. It was a servo at the front and a tavern at the back, but it wasn’t the sort of place that seemed to cater for a few quick sandwiches and soft drinks.

So we went off down the road, looking for something better. Which was sort of a Belgian Subway or Quiznos, once we found a place to park that wasn’t ridiculously illegal, marvelled at the roadside shrine at the front door, and looked inside.

Two problems: first, the ordering process seemed overly complex. Doubtless it was just a matter of selecting bread, filling, sauces and salads, but I probably had the best French of us all, and my few phrases weren’t going to be up to the task. Falling back on “point and grunt” might work, but would likely earn us no points with the long queue of hungry Belgians. Second problem was that there were no signs indicating acceptance of any cards we had. We could be seriously embarrassed. And hungry.

So we piled back into the car, hunted around for fatter pickings. No autotellers operational, no diners taking cards.

Eventually I took the wheel, found an autoteller in a neighbouring town – along with parking – and discovered that the brand of autoteller only served Belgian Post Office accounts.

Finally found one that worked for us, got some money, and looked for a food outlet. Seemed to be market day, and a cluster of stalls in the town square was doing fine business. We looked, and one stallholder was slicing meat patties in half – two semicircles – which he cooked and crammed into a half-baguette with salad and sauce. Consensus was that these looked quick and tasty, but what were they called so we could order them? A young woman received hers and began moving away.

“Go, on!” I was urged. “Ask her!”

“Um,” I said in my best French. I pointed at her snack, “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

She looked at me, startled. “C’est un ‘amburger!”

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There are dozens of good songs about San Francisco. Haunting, evocative, meaningful golden hits. But there’s not a one of them comes close to this one. Coupled with the beautiful dancing and the iconic backdrops of the video, this Australian’s heart near breaks. I want to be back in San Francisco.

The loveliness of Paris
Seems somehow sadly gay
The glory that was Rome
Is of another day
I’ve been terribly alone
And forgotten in Manhattan
I’m going home to my city by the bay.

I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me.
To be where little cable cars
Climb halfway to the stars!
The morning fog may chill the air
I don’t care!

My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
Your golden sun will shine for me!

It’s not just Tony Bennett who left his heart here. Mine as well, somewhere between Fishermans’ Wharf and Fort Mason.

The rule of three

It was my first round the world trip. Fort Worth was my conference destination, but I wanted to combine it with a visit to London, where I would visit every location on the British Monopoly board. Trafalgar Square, Old Kent Road, Marylebone Street Station…

“You need to make a third stop on this ticket,” my travel agent said, indicating a line on the brochure: Minimum number of stopovers: three.

Quick. What other place after London and Fort Worth could I see on a round the world ticket? It was like a free holiday waved under my nose. Where did I want to go?

Well, everywhere. Flight Centre offices have a big map of the world on the wall. Actually, it is the wall. So many mouth-watering destinations!

The two flagship routes of Qantas Airways are the Kangaroo Hop from Sydney to London and the TransPacific Los Angeles to Sydney sector. I wanted to do both those legs. Any diversions would be inefficient, wasting time and adding distance. So somewhere in between London and Los Angeles, I had to pick a another city. I chose San Francisco almost at random, as being a minor diversion between Fort Worth and Los Angeles. I was quite certain I didn’t want to do time in LA. I’d seen LA from the air a month earlier, and it looked horrible.

Besides, I’d been listening to songs about San Francisco for years. People crooning on about bridges and cable cars and love and flowers and smiles. Songs about Los Angeles were hard-edged and desperate.

It was a quick decision, and one of the best choices of my life.

Arrival

It was a fantastic flight over mountains and deserts from Dallas Fort Worth. I was leaning way, way out of the window, taking in the incredible landscapes below. At one point we overflew Yosemite, the combination of green meadows and forest with the grey granite cliffs etched in my memory.

We descended over growing settlements, gliding in at last over the southern Bay, my seat on the port side of the MD-80 lacking any view of the city itself. A shuttle from the airport, talking with a fellow traveller from New Zealand, dropping off others at hotels in the central city and finally depositing me, the last aboard, at the Fort Mason youth hostel.

I checked in, gratefully stowed my luggage in a locker, and asked at the front desk for a place to have lunch and buy groceries. “There’s a Safeway not far off,” they said.” Just go outside and follow the path west.”

The Market

San Francisco has many markets. Neighbourhood festivals, the glorious Ferry Markt, the touristy mixed grill and candy store of Fishermans’ Wharf. But for me there is only one that counts. The best supermarket in the world: the Marina Safeway.

Marina Safeway

A dozen cardboard disks dangled from the ceiling of the Marina Safeway, coaxing the customers with a double-edged message: ‘Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends.’

And friends were being made.

As Mary Ann watched, a blond man in a Stanford sweatshirt sauntered up to a brunette in a denim halter. ‘Uh… excuse me, but could you tell me whether it’s better to use Saffola oil or Wesson oil?’

The girl giggled. ‘For what?’

— Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City

An early scene in the classic San Francisco serial novel Tales of the City, documenting (or possibly establishing) the reputation of the place as a pick-up joint where dates are made over dates, links forged over the sausages, mangoes admired in the fruit department and the meat section is a hot joint.

The legend raises no doubts here. It’s a remarkable place, the Marina Safeway, a place for dreams to come true, the happiest market of them all. Not too big and impersonal, but neither is it a hole in the wall place with limited stocks and choices. It’s precisely the right size for a supermarket.

Funky curved facade, and the most stunning setting outside. Dinky little San Francisco houses, the Marina Green reaching up the hill to Fort Mason, full of people walking dogs, throwing frisbees. Fort Mason’s historic wharves stretching out into the Bay, the Bay itself, and the great golden Bridge away off to the left, disappearing into the sunny hills of Marin.

Convertibles whip along Marina Boulevard outside, and there’s a continuous stream of cyclists heading off over the bridge to Sausalito and back by ferry. It’s a sunny outlook.

This was actually my first time inside a genuine American supermarket, as distinct from a drugstore. The fresh food section was worth a look – some odd names for familiar foods. Capsicums were called bell peppers here.

And the delicatessen section was selling lunches. You don’t get that in Australia. Packaged snacks, lunch meats, salads in tubs and cooked chickens is as close as it comes, but here were counter staff making sub sandwiches. A sandwich, bag of chips, and soft drink for a bargain price.

The meal

I chose a sandwich with some sort of turkey salad, a bag of chips – crisp chips, not fries chips – and a big paper cup of root beer. I adore root beer.

Nowhere to eat it in the store, of course. There are limits. Outside I wandered, vowing to return to buy some of those exotic American candies for my children back home in Canberra, and cast about for a seat. A park bench. Somewhere with a view, preferably.

I looked in vain all the way up the Fort Mason hill and down again. Great views, but no seats, unless I wanted to perch on the stone wall.

In the end, that’s what I did. Just short of the great curving breakwater of Aquatic Park, I sat down on the seawall, not quite dangling my legs in the water, and I ate my lunch, gazing out with delight at Alcatraz afloat in the bay, the sun glancing off the water, the ferries churning their ways, the gulls swooping down for a hopeful glance at my meal, and the tourists passing by.

Not a memorable meal, foodwise. It was all good, but nothing I couldn’t have had at home, apart from the rootbeer, which was slurped with deep satisfaction until the ice rattled forlornly in the bottom of the cup.

But the setting! I was in a sunny Californian heaven with the chance of sealions, which were swimming nearby. San Francisco in all its glory was around me. Architectural oddities, a sandy beach, swimmers taking their chances with the wildlife, a group of Segway riders on a tour, the Bay Bridge stretching away beyond the as yet unsampled delights of Fishermans’ Wharf.

Here I was, sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the ships roll in, at ease in the sun and salt air, chowing down on turkey and sauce in a soft bun and swigging the rootnectar of the gods. I liked California. This felt like a comfortable, friendly home.

A couple of Australian tourists paused to ask me for directions to the Golden Gate Bridge. They must have mistaken me for a local, but I pointed them up over Fort Mason and told them how far it was. “A fair hike around the bay, several kilometres, but it’s all flat once you get over the hill.”

“But I’ve only been here about half an hour, meself,” I confessed.

We chatted about Australia and possible mutual acquaintances back home. They spotted the name “Skyring” on my travel journal and went through their lists of members of the Skyring family living in Canberra. “It’s just a screen name,” I said, and went on to tell them about BookCrossing.com. I may even have given them a book – there’s usually one or two dozen somewhere within my easy reach!

The place

Tony Bennett's Heart in Union Square

The cable cars winching up those impossibly steep hills – I had to sweat up and down a couple to make an evening meeting of local BookCrossers – the friendliness, the Anchor Steam beer, the views, the bookshops, the ships, wharves, ferries and quirky bay-windowed houses. It was all marvellous. It was America: jubilant, joyous, free and relaxed.

And, as I walked through Union Square on the way back – this time via Muni bus – I saw a sight that sums up San Francisco for me. Tony Bennett’s heart, large enough for kids to climb on, painted with San Francisco icons, cheerful and happy. My own heart rests beside it.

–Skyring

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Resources

• Yelp on Marina Safeway
• Violet Blue on the ‘Dateway’

Bonus video – Otis Redding

No related posts.

January. Midsummer in Canberra. Hot, dry. T-shirt, short pants and sandals. Relief comes in the long daylight saving evenings when the sun slides down behind the Brindabellas and the shadows of the gum trees lengthen out across the valley.

My wife’s sister arrived at the door with a bottle of champagne. I looked at it and at her. Blank.

“Ah, happy birthday?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s for Kerri.”

Oh yes. My wife. She was off to America in a couple of days. Some government conference. Every three months she was abroad. Stockholm, Berlin, Paris…

I fetched flutes, poured the chilled wine, and we sat outside on the deck, talking in the warm mellowing evening.

“I’d love to be going with her,” I said. Washington DC. Kerri had two conferences to attend, and would be spending a week there, all expenses paid, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer and the UN. I thought about Washington – the Smithsonians, the galleries, the grand buildings, the White House. Arlington and JFK. The heart of America.

But I’d never travelled far. We’d gone to New Zealand on our honeymoon twenty years earlier, and then again for a second holiday, two teenagers in the back seat. That was it. I’d travel further one day. One day…

“Well, why don’t you?”

I thought about this. We were doing okay financially, I’d be able to share the hotel room, the internet bookselling business could go hang for a week, the kids were old enough to look after themselves. But international travel! That was a big step.

I excused myself, went inside, a little bubbly as I checked the computer. Canberra to Washington and back was expensive, but not out of the question. Only trouble was that it was too late to book online.

So next morning I was there at Flight Centre, telling a travel agent, “I’d like to fly to Washington. Tomorrow.”

And it was so. That “one day” was on me.

The song

America! The nation dominated the news and the world of my childhood. Still does. The British Empire had crumbled, the Communists didn’t have the media coverage, the Europeans spoke a bunch of incomprehensible, but the Americans were pumping out cool stuff faster and cooler as they launched satellites and boosted communications and finally invented the internet and my life will never be the same.

Americans had the best music, the brightest films, the fastest cars, the sharpest planes…

And the space program. During the Sixties the Soviets lost their early lead as America pushed up rocket after rocket until that memorable black and white day they landed on the moon. The Russians couldn’t compete after that.

As it turned out, neither could the Americans, and space exploration fizzled off into seeing how bored astronauts could get as they went umpty-zillion times around the world in cobbled-together space stations.

Still, it was America that seized my growing imagination, and when in Sunnybank State High School we studied Simon and Garfunkel, I was struck by the poignancy and accuracy of this song.

…I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
For we’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea

For we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune…

Isn’t that America all over? Written just shy of the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, post Vietnam, Paul Simon – Rhymin’ Simon – had summed up his nation in a few lines. Two hundred years old, creaky at the joints, forgetting stuff, making odd decisions, but still pumping out the hits. A nation founded on some solid notions. Liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equality. It might not always have turned out as it should, but America had a heart of gold, and you could be sure that Uncle Sam would get there in the end.

The place

I’ve been in some magical places in my time. A New Zealand cave with a galaxy of glow-worms lighting our upturned faces drifting in a boat down an underground river. Kissing my wife on top of the Eiffel Tower. Seeing sperm whales off Kaikoura. Standing before Sagrada Familia in awe. The laser light show over Hong Kong Harbour.

Cold in the capital

But there I was, one wondrous week in Washington DC, the fresh snow deep and white down the Mall. I all but had the city to myself, just a few hardy tourists and the odd yellow schoolbus full of interstate kids braving the snow.

Quite frankly, I’d never been so cold in my life. I walked across from Arlington, and the Potomac was frozen over. I’d never seen a frozen river. I’d never seen much in the way of snow, neither. But here were great drifts of it, with homeless people shivering in corners.

Coming from midsummer Australia to frozen America in January, it was a shock in so many ways. But I pulled on my gloves, bought a beanie from a souvenir stand selling off leftovers from the second Bush inauguration, and high-stepped through the snow, enjoying the atmosphere, enjoying the grand buildings, enjoying the emptiness.

I could see that the National Archives were set up for thousands of visitors. But there was just me and a dozen others in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. I could gaze on the Declaration of Liberty and the US Constitution for as long as I wished.

And I did. In many ways, the United States of America is Australia’s big brother. Americans fought the battles of a firstborn, hardwon freedoms that younger siblings gained with ease. Australia’s independence came with ink, not blood. It is only proper to pay some measure of homage to those who went first.

And what a prize they won! The world’s first great modern democracy. The model for the modern age. The shining example, exemplified by the Statue of Liberty holding the torch of freedom high.

Inspiring stuff, and I glowed as I walked out into the snow again. Lofty thoughts were in my head, and it seemed only right that I turn towards the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where dreams were high as the sky itself.

Another place where the lines stretched around the block in summer. Another place that was just me and a few tourists. I touched a piece of the sky on the way in. A slice of moon rock. For a moment I was magic.

Such amazing aircraft. Here were the highlights of a century of flight, hanging from the ceiling, resting on simulated runways, just a thin wire separating me from the Wright Brothers canvas and string Flyer of 1903.

The Spirit of Saint Louis is there, one of the first planes to fly the Atlantic. One man, one engine, New York to Paris non-stop. The feat fired imaginations around the world.

Its streamlined shape is echoed and refined by that of the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, which the legendary Chuck Yeager piloted to become the first human to exceed the speed of sound. Built like a bullet, this rocket powered craft broke the sound barrier in 1947 and hangs in a corner of the main hall, its needle nose spearing the air.

There are planes and rockets and spacecraft galore. A Boeing 747. John Glenn’s Mercury capsule. A simulated USN aircraft carrier holding naval aircraft on a portion of flight deck. Craft from all eras, from the biplanes of WW1 to the world’s first private spaceship.

A place for kids of all ages. The awe on the face of a five-year old is matched by the sparkle in his grandfather’s eye.

For me, the most magical place of all was there in a corner of the great hall, standing before the very ship that sailed the moon. This was science fiction made true in metal and perspex. This was mankind’s greatest feat. This was a marvel of technology. This wasn’t two guys in a garage, this was a mighty national effort – a triumph of organisation, teamwork, science and sweat.

I never tire of the story of Apollo. It might have seemed routine in the terse phrases of the mission controllers, the endless acronyms of LEM and CSM and MOCR, the flag-waving and the speeches. But it was new and dangerous in the Sixties. The three men who had lived in this tiny gumdrop of a craft for ten days had truly gone where no man had gone before. In space, in time, in history.

They and their comrades were the heroes of my youth. And they still are.

The meal

I ate lunch in the Smithsonian Air and Space. In many ways, it was as quintessentially American as a plate of ribs. Or hog jowls and cornpone. It was fitting.

America on a plate - without the plate

It wasn’t a meal to write home about, unless it was to say in wonder, “Hey, they have McDonalds here in America too!”

It wasn’t a unique experience. Small details of packaging aside, it was exactly the same meal I could have had in the Canberra Centre. Or Kowloon. Or on the Boulevard St Michel. Or off Trafalgar Square.

But it was perfect for the setting. Remember how I mentioned that the grand museums were set up for thousands of visitors? They were, with chains and poles set up to guide lines of tourists zig zag from the street to the entrance, from the door to the counter, past the notable exhibits in an orderly fashion. In the land of the free, this was the home of the queue.

In the basements, in the cafeterias, fast food chains took care of the crowds. Subway, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried and McDonalds. Thousands could be fed fast, rather than fed up slowly.

I felt odd indeed, walking straight up to the counter, getting my Big Mac meal in a matter of seconds, and then taking my pick from the hundreds of tables in the vast refectory area. I chose one by the window, where the new Museum of the American Indian challenged the classic columns and porticos lining the Mall.

Perhaps it is fitting that I cannot remember any details of the food. Just the setting. But my readers have had the same meal. The same exact taste and texture. I don’t need to describe the crisp salt taste of the chips, the thrill of the cola going down as the ice cubes clinkle, the tart pickle and sauce on the grilled patties, and the sesame seeds of the buns finding the crevices in our teeth. We know it all too well.

It is not good food. It is fat and carbohydrates, sugar and salt. But it is precisely what I needed on this freezing day before I ventured back outside. A calorie hit of junk food.

And, for the millions of visitors to the various Smithsonians, it is homely food. Familiar in price and taste. There’s no flight into the unknown, no agonising over a decision between (say) the Apollo Sandwich and the Lindbergh Lunch. Instant decision, instant service, instant satisfaction, next please!

The key

Champagne and a Big Mac. I’ve kept the label from the bottle, page one of the scrapbook I made for the trip. It was a HUGE step for me to go to Washington, but once I’d made it, I never stopped. Every year since then I’ve been around the world once or twice.

Sometimes I smile at the young man in his late forties who looked with awe down at the frozen river, the crisp snow, the flame burning over a fallen president. So many stars in his eyes! Every airport was new and exciting. LAX was an adventure where people walked on the wrong side and black men in uniform called you “Sir” as they patted you down for a random security check.

My life has changed beyond imagining. That trip with my wife to Washington DC set me travelling. Usually alone, sometimes with a merry companion or two. On average, I take a flight every ten days, often long-haul. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve flown in and out of Kingsford-Smith. Or Heathrow. Or DFW.

But I can’t lose the excitement of a new city, a new place, a new set of memories. A new meal. I’ve barely tasted America in my five years of travel. I shall return.

Resources

• Blog post about the song, looking back.
• The Big Mac on Wikipedia
• The Big Mac Index in The Economist
• The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
• Apollo 11 mission in photographs

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Related posts:

1. Looking for America

I might slow down now. Maybe one post a week, drawing on the reserves. Mickey Mantle’s in Manhattan from July. My first meal in America: its surprising location and the beginning of a five year friendship. The best breakfast I ever had. Lots of stuff.

And by about April, I’ll be back in America, having more fun and fabulous food.

In the meantime, here’s where I hang out every day: Artoven, the home of a superior rock cake.

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Kansas City – in Kansas – on a Saturday night. We headed off to Legends, a vast shopping mall built around a racetrack and sportsfields. An island building in the huge carpark, Cheeseburger in Paradise was our destination. There were thirty hungry BookCrossers to be fed. Just one of those convention meals that arise. You know how it goes.

“Say, where we all eating tonight?”

“Anywhere you want, honey.”

“We thought we’d ask a local. Like you.”

“Well, there’s this cheeseburger place that’s kind of fun. There’s a Books-A-Million branch nearby…”

“I’m sold!”

And before you know it, half the convention is joining you for dinner and you need a whole bunch of tables.

The song

I’ve been listening to Jimmy Buffett since the 1980s. His bouncy ballads of island life and margaritas and sailing and just lazing about have hit my buttons. Perfect for conjuring up a different lifestyle when your own is full of grey clouds and storms. He’ll have you smiling by the end of the first track, tapping your toes in the second, and if you haven’t got a party going with jugs full of cold drinks halfway through the album, you’re in serious trouble.

Cheeseburger in Paradise is a typical bit of Buffett fluff. It sold about a bazillion copies, and it describes the perfect meal for a sailor finishing a cruise where the only food left aboard is peanut butter and beans. This is the meal Jimmy was dreaming about:

…at night I’d have these wonderful dreams
Some kind of sensuous treat
Not zucchini, fettucini, or bulgar wheat
But a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat

Cheeseburger in paradise
Heaven on earth with an onion slice
Medium rare with mustard’d be nice
Not too particular, not too precise
I’m just a cheeseburger in paradise

I like mine with lettuce and tomato
Heinz 57 and french fried potatoes
Big kosher pickle and a cold draught beer
Well, good god Almighty which way do I steer?

The plate

I stuck to the Jimmy Buffett prescription exactly. Apart from the medium rare part. I don’t hold with minced meat being anything less than cooked all the way through. Fine for a steak to be pink inside, but with mince, some of the original surface could be in the middle of the pattie. You want any germs that may have been on the surface to be well and truly cooked out.

I was also driving, so I swapped out the cold draft beer for a mug of root beer. Well, it’s beer, innit?

Whatever, the meal was one to dream about, and one to remember fondly forever. You can bet every time I hear that song, I’ll be back in Kansas City!

The burger was superb, the service smiling and perky from some young thing who looked like she’d just come from her day job as a waitress at a tropic beach resort, and the atmosphere was good fun, the decor themed down to Hawai’ian labels on the restrooms. Windsurfers, palms, sails and shells. Food and drinks to match. I loved it. It was perfect.

The place

We were staying in Overland Park at the DoubleTree, and there’s actually another Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant closer to the hotel, but we went off to Legends. I had plugged the closer one into the GPS just to make sure if we lost the car we were following, and all the way there the GPS would tell us to do a u-turn and it was “Recalculating, dammit”. I was certain that the people ahead had made a serious mistake and we’d eventually have to turn around and go all the way back, late for dinner.

Quite a drive, and I was lost after about the sixth big highway! It was a relief to find a park and see the big neon sign, with a platoon of hungry BookCrossers outside.

Books-A-Million at Legends

The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel

This was also the place where I discovered Maurice Sendak, reading his Where the Wild Things Are to Discoverylover, and being arterly charmed.

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The BookCrossing

BookCrossing is this crazy American idea where you go to the BookCrossing.com website, enter some details about your book, get an ID number which you write on the book (usually on a label which gives instructions) and then release it “into the wild” on a park bench, a coffeeshop table, on a cable car…

Or in this case, into one of the many fountains in Legends in Kansas City. Here’s Discoverylover from New Zealand setting one free:

There is nothing quite like getting a bunch of BookCrossers together and doing crazy stuff, just giving books away!

–Skyring

Resources

• The restaurant website
• The Wikipedia entry for the song
• The Wikipedia entry for the restaurant chain

Related posts:

1. Looking for America

The first edition of Little House on the Prairie

The Little House on the Prairie books are well-beloved in America. And the world. Tales of family life and struggles on the frontier. Hazards of life and community that rarely touch the real lives of we children of later years, but were very real to the pioneers.

They were hardy folk, not because they wanted it that way, but because they had to be. They tamed the land, they built the towns, they made a nation.

In Australia it was much the same. Not so heavy on the snowstorms, but our pioneers had to cope with drought and bushfires. And locust swarms, eating all and breaking hearts. Two very different lands, but here the essential realities of family survival in a harsh but ultimately rewarding wilderness were the same. The land tested the occupants, and the hardy overcame the challenges, found love and began their own families in a slightly less forbidding environment. Ultimately, it is not the land that is the story, it is the people.

There were nine Little House books in the series:

1. Little House in the Big Woods: Laura’s early childhood in Wisconsin from about 1870.
2. Farmer Boy: The early life of Laura’s later husband, Almanzo Wilder, in New York State.
3. Little House on the Prairie: Laura’s childhood home in Kansas.
4. On the Banks of Plum Creek: The Ingalls family in Minnesota, about 1875.
5. By the Shores of Silver Lake: De Smet, South Dakota in 1879
6. The Long Winter: The severe winter of 1880/81 in South Dakota
7. Little Town on the Prairie: Laura’s adolescence in De Smet, 1881/82
8. These Happy Golden Years: Laura’s teens and courting with Almanzo.
9. The First Four Years: The first years of married life.

These books were written and published in Mansfield, Missouri between 1932 and 1943, and during this period Laura became famous as a beloved author.

A later generation rediscovered the stories when they were made into a television series later, which brought a new boost of life to the books. Safe to say that Laura Ingalls Wilder is a name beloved by people around the world. In America, she occupies a pedestal with Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery and others.

The place

Skyring in Missouri

Driving a Dodge between Kansas City and Oklahoma City, a small part of the way on Route 66, we booklovers were drawn to the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I and a precocious lad of three in the third seat row were the only males in the vehicle, with three generations of women my passengers. I merely operated the steering and foot paddles – all of the direction came from beside and behind me. Not to mention the occasionally snarky voice of the GPS if I made a wrong turn.

Look, Wanda the GPS voice, it’s not as easy as you might think, driving an unfamiliar vehicle on the wrong side of the road. Every intersection, I had to think, “Left is loose, Right is tight.” And every now and then I’d get it wrong, usually when I was feeling confident and satisfied. Luckily my passengers were awake, and the shrieks of dismay and outrage would remind me that I wasn’t in Oz any more.

There was a little fiddly bit of country road before we got there. Themed motels popped up on hillsides. We rounded a bend, and there it was, historic house and farm on one side of the road, car park – and a thoughtful and very welcome amenities block – on the other.

We got out, stretched our legs, used the facilities – it had been a long drive from Kansas City – and posed for photographs beside the sign. I had lugged my taxidriver uniform to the far side of the road, and here I was driving a van load of lovely ladies, opening doors and tucking them into their seatbelts, doing my taxidriver thing, and I wasn’t going to let the occasion pass unrecorded.

This is Rocky Ridge Farm where Laura wrote her books, though it isn’t the subject of any of them. It’s now a shrine to her, her family, and her books. And to America.

If I edit this in visual, I’ll lose the map, but the link remains:

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The house

Rocky Ridge Farm

Having the carpark on the other side of the road leaves the farm looking much as it must have during the years that Laura and Almanzo worked the land, at least up until about 1960, by which time they had both departed. We walked up the drive, past old trees planted a century gone, Halloween decorations here and there. Left was the store, ahead the museum and reception, right the old farmhouse, looking as genuine an American residence as ever I’ve seen.

A little house in its own right, it has grown steadily larger. Originally little more than a kitchen and bedroom, it expanded with the increasing prosperity of the Wilder family, growing rooms and windows and levels.

The entry fee was modest, well worth admission to the museum, a treasure trove of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her books. Here was Pa’s fiddle, from the pages of the earliest book and the earliest years of Laura’s infancy. Still brought out and played every year.

A covered wagon, chairs, desks, craft, photographs, the family bible, a shelf of translated editions of the books. Honestly, I could have staid a week and not admired every item. The real Laura Ingalls Wilder fans must live in rapture here.

The house is accessible from the museum. Small groups under the direction of a guide tour regularly. We entered the oldest part of the house, shoulder to shoulder in the tiny rooms, looking at the original furnishings, listening to the guide talk of the history and people of the cosy home.

The rooms grew bigger with the decades, reflecting the success of the farm and the books. We looked at the places where Laura worked, setting her memories down on paper. Here, in the heart of America, she poured hers out, telling of dangers, romance, nostalgia and childhood dreams.

We finished our tour in a large room with a pleasant outlook. The culmination of a life of effort, Laura would have been at home here, answering her fan mail, writing further books, enjoying retirement.

We left the house for the visitor centre, sitting in on an audio visual narrative of Laura’s life, and then browsing through the shop, with sets of books, biographies, photographs, postcards, craft items and clothing.

The other house

Once the royalties began flowing in, Laura’s daughter Rose bought a house from the Sears catalogue and erected it for her parents over the other side of the hill. It’s within walking distance, but in a car it takes a few minutes to circle around, park and walk up the hill.

Here another guide led us through the house, which must have seemed ultra modern when it was built. Many of the features, such as built-in wardrobes, we take for granted now, but were the amazement of the country when new. Laura and Almanzo lived here for a while, but eventually returned to their homely house with its happy memories.

The key

Rocky Ridge scarecrows

Cornmeal Mush, Bean Porridge (along with the famous rhyme) and Corn Dodgers. Potato Cakes, Creamed Carrots, Fried Parsnips and Succotash, Ma’s Green Tomato Pickles.

And a hundred more, each with a story or snippet of historical information and link to the books. This is a cookbook with depth and flavour, stick-to-your-ribs food to survive a long winter or spend a day on the farm, stick-to-your-brain facts of days long gone.

These are the foods that Laura ate and wrote about through her life. For modern America, long used to bland, processed food, this book is a refreshing taste, a flavour and savour of the real roots of the land.

–Skyring

Resources

• Wikipedia article on Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Amazon Laura Ingalls Wilder store
• Laura Ingalls Wilder historic home
• Little House recipes

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“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America

The quest

This song has always intrigued me. How do you look for America? How do you know when you’ve found it? Now, whenever I am planning an American trip, I put this song on the radio, open the door, lean over the roof of the cab and wonder what I will find. My eyes and dreams follow the airliners as they rise into the sky, little winking points of light over Mount Majura, and I sigh, dreaming of my next visit.

They’ve all gone to look for America…

I’ve looked for America out of the windows of countless planes. I remember my first excited glimpse of the dawning coastline north of Los Angeles, then the sprawl of the great city and a white Hollywood sign. Or, should I count my earlier midnight view of glowing lava far below as we passed over Hawai’i on the long hop from Sydney?

I’ve felt close to finding America in a dozen places. The original star-spangled banner in the Smithsonian. Columbia. The longhorns in Fort Worth. Driving a big Chrysler down Route 66. Looking into the empty, aching pit of Ground Zero. Lifting my gaze to meet that of Lady Liberty. Fort Sumter a low shape in Charleston Harbor. Little Round Top, Devils Den, Gettysburg. A dozen long and lonely interstates. Niagara Falls linking two nations. The Carnegie Deli. The Marina Safeway: Golden Gate on one side, Alcatraz on the other. Or Arizona, oil bubbles leaking to the surface seventy years on.

The place

Norm Lambert: rolls and jowls

I found America near Springfield, Missouri. We’d left Kansas City that morning, found the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame about lunch time, we’d driven another hour since and we was famished.

Middle of Missouri, middle of America, our van one of dozens in the parking lot, our restaurant a metal shed.

Inside, there were walls lined with numberplates from every State in the Union, and many from overseas – the first one I spotted was from the Northern Territory, its markings the ochre dust of outback Australia.

In this place, just another restaurant out of millions, I was able to convince myself that I had found America. In essence, in microcosm. The real thing is out there,too vast and too complex to take in all at once. You could spend a lifetime looking for America and never satisfy yourself that you were there. In Lambert’s Cafe, I knew I was right in the heartland. In the guts of it.

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The plate

Outside, there was a sign saying “Enjoy Norm’s Hog Jowl”. I was sold, from the moment I saw it. I’d heard of hog jowls as a dish, I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect, but I knew that I wanted to try them, even if it involved slabs of pig’s face on my plate, looking up at me.

First, there were rolls being throwed. A voice on the far side of the hall sang out, “Hot rolls!”, and all around, hands rose in the air. Suddenly there were bread rolls whizzing past. They must employ off-season baseball pitchers or something. I tentatively waved my hand, wondering if maybe I should have brought along a catcher’s mitt, but before I knew it, my grasp was wrapped around the hottest, sweetest, softest bun in the world. Being beaned by these buns would be no hardship.

Oh Sweet Lord, this bun – and the several that followed it – were pure glory! Break them open, smear them with butter or sorghum, or just eat them as they come. It’s all good.

Then a cheerful young lady about a hundred kilos or so stopt by. “Okra?” she asked, and while the golden balls in the huge basin she carried looked appetising, we said that we had no plates yet.

“There’s your paper plates!” she said, pointing out a roll of brown kitchen paper with a jut of her chest.

We ript off a napkin each, and she ladled a golden mound on each. Okra, when battered and deepfried just right, is delicious.

And free. Okra balls, black-eyed peas, the rolls, the red beans, a few other “pass-around” dishes: all free, as much as you want, as long as you want. Seriously, so long as you are not a carnivore, you can stuff yourself full of wholesome, delicious food for nothing.

But you want to save a little room for the main. All right, a lot of room. These serving sizes are huge. The hamburgers aren’t your quarter-pounders, hell no, you get a full pound of prime meat in each pattie, and they are served on skillets.

That’s my order of hog jowls. Not what I was expecting. The jowls had been sliced up into what looked like small bacon rashers, and there was about a week’s worth in the bowl. Sides of red beans and peaches, a few salad items, cornbread and pass-around fried potato. Flooded down with a bucket of root beer. This was heaven, right here.

My companions ordered chicken-fried steak and ham. Ham like you’ve never seen it: thick slabs about the size of the plate. And these were not dainty little plates. These were platters and skillets loaded down with tucker.

My hog jowls were loaded down with strips of fat, but the meat of the cheek was lighter than bacon. Lush and succulent, my sides of peaches and red beans complemented the meat well. The fried potato and onions were simply awesome. A free side dish, I could have cheerfully munched on them for a light lunch all by themselves. The square of cornbread was a little dry, but honestly, it would have to be God’s own cornbread to compete with those sweet rolls that kept flying around the room.

I tasted my companions’ chicken-fried steak and ham. They begged me to eat more, in fact, but I was hard-pressed to polish off my bowl of jowls. Their meals were every bit as good as mine. This was good food, well-cooked, served with flair. No wonder some days there is a two hour wait to be seated.

Dessert was on offer afterwards, but we looked around, each of us strained to finish what we’d ordered for the main course, and we declined. We past on coffee as well. If we tried to fit anything else in, we’d waddle and slosh on our way back to the van.

The key

There is a lot to love and hate about America. For every grand and noble place or concept or act of glory, there is something low and abhorrent. A nation founded on liberty – and slavery. The best medical science in the world, but many citizens cannot afford basic health care. Grand buildings a few blocks away from mean hovels. A great gap between rich and poor.

Lambert’s Cafe is a temple to greed and waste. The Travel Channel officially named it as “World’s Best Place to Pig Out”. Giving people ridiculous amounts of greasy food to stuff into their ample bellies. How many are thinking of starving children in Africa as they cram in the last crumb of corn bread?

The walls are covered in Americana. License plates, old adverts, hokey pictures. It is a microcosm of the nation, in time and space.

The atmosphere is fun and exciting. Rolls hurtling through the air, servers ladling out helpings of American staples, colourful and huge beverage containers. Everyone is happy.

This is a place of dreams and greed and commercial enterprise, corn and hokum, pride and size. It’s just a big tin shed with a homely front. It’s a legend, a family tradition, a local showpiece.

And it is America. Every little bit of it. It is the Stars and Stripes waving outside, it is the South reborn, it is coffee triumphing over tea, right down to the very name of the thing.

You want America, it is here, fat and happy. I love it.

–Skyring

Gallery

Resources

• Lambert’s Cafe website
• Wikipedia article
• Urbanspoon reviews
• Recipe for Throwed Rolls
• America in Wikipedia
• America Songfacts

Related posts:

1. Song of America
2. Cheeseburger in Paradise