tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption

CHAIN -- Mc Donald's
Owner -- Mc Donald's Corporation (NYSE: MCD)
Primary Operating Region -- Earth (Try NOT to find one)
Number of Locations -- 13,491 in US, 30,025 total worldwide (December 2002)

It's easy to completely overlook Mc Donald's today.  There are so many alternatives.  But in my childhood, going to Mc Donald's was a huge deal.  

I have so many memories of Mc Donald's...That classic original white-and red building design with the dual golden arches (we had one on TV Hwy in Beaverton).  My first Quarter Pounder...NOT with cheese.  My father's seemingly personal bitterness against eating there.  But most of all, I remember when my father moved us to Alaska, and figuring out there was no Mc Donald's anywhere even remotely accessible, not to mention anything resembling it.  For a 9-year-old kid in 1976, this was a problem.  

Mc Donald's was a hot commodity in Ketchikan and all Southeast Alaska cities.  It was mandatory that you bring Mc Donald's food back with you if you were flying in from Seattle.  It was like hauling legal contraband.  When Juneau finally got one in about 1982 (opening day included three traffic accidents in the parking lot, or so I'm told), I remember a guy on our high school basketball team arriving at school after a flight the night before from a game in Juneau...with a duffle bag full of day-old Big Mac's.  He sold every one of them in fifteen minutes....for $10 apiece.  I remember a  winter's day in 1984, going to the nearest Mc Donald's to the Seattle-Tacoma airport I could find and ordering lunch for me...and two large bags of Big Mac's and Quarter Pounders for freezer storage back home.  Some guy was flirting with the counter girl when I walked up and said something like "20 Big Mac's, 20 Quarter Pounders, 10 6-piece Mc Nuggets, a large fries and a Coke.  And pack it up tight, it's going to Alaska."  The girl stared back at me dumbfounded while the guy, not missing a beat, said "Are you planning to share the fries?"

Ketchikan finally got a Mc Donald's in 1985 as I recall.  It was the first Mc Donald's in history to have a drive-thru even though it was in an enclosed shopping mall (it was on a corner of the mall, allowing for the drive-thru.)  They also took over the only other chain we had in town, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, which became a storage facility for Mc Donald's' supplies.  (We did have a Dairy Queen for a short time, just for the record...)  Sure I was an adult by now, but I still went to the mall when Ronald Mc Donald came to town and put on his magic show for the kids.  Every adult there smiled as big as the kids.  We'd waited a long time for that little slice of Americana.

There are so many different fast food places today doing so many different things.  But I still go back to Mc Donald's from time-to-time, and I'm clearly not alone...It's still the only fast food chain I know of that you can go to any time of the day and there's at least a car in the drive-thru lane...and usually there's more than just the one.  Their Steak, Egg, and Cheese bagel replaced my longtime favorite breakfast sandwich, the Sausage Mc Muffin with Egg, while it was on the menu.  Their recent change to the "Made For You" (no more bun-warmer stale burgers!) system has improved quality greatly.  They're still the 800-pound gorilla, but that's fine with me.  There's something comforting...even patriotic...to know there's still one at every exit.

As for Ketchikan, I hear Mc Donald's finally got some competition recently in the form of a Burger King.  I also hear it's already closed.

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