My Bizarre Filet-O-Fish Encounter!
I drove 2,200 miles in 5 days last month with my son Jeff, and we had many interesting adventures…none as bizarre, however, than my filet-o-fish mystery!
Cactus, Cactus Everywhere!
We drove through California, Arizona, New Mexico and into Texas – seeing hours and hours of desert, cactus, and lots of strange rock formations, including this one, which had me thinking:
“Hey Now…”
We ate a lot of “somewhat fast food”, since we were dining 2,200 miles in 5 days and didn’t have too much time to kill: when the day’s drive wasn’t too intensive, we had time to stop and get something like this:
Yes, it’s close to fast food, but at least we tried!
But one day in particular, we had almost 600 miles to drive – AND we had to jump off the main interstate, the I-10, and head into some of Texas’s more rural roads…
We found ourselves in a few strange small towns, not helped by signs like this:
As you can see, once you exit the 10 Interstate, it reverts to the wild wild west again – although at one point I actually thought I was home:
Not THAT Beverly Hills!
No, this is not the 90210 Beverly Hills; instead, it’s a city in McLennan County, Texas. The population was 2,234 at the time of the 2010 census. The city close to Waco, and the smaller highway took us past a number of towns that were more “seasoned”:
It was here that I suggested to Jeff that we just grab some McDonald’s drive-thru and keep driving…and it is also here that my strange “Filet-O-Fish” saga began…
First, the history of the “Filet-O-Fish.” According to wikipedia, this famous sandwich was invented in 1962 by Lou Groen, a McDonald’s franchise owner in Cincinnati;it turns out his store was in a predominantly Roman Catholic neighborhood, which led to falling hamburger sales on Fridays – and a tasty sandwich was born!
The Filet-O-Fish Encounter!
So, as you can see, a filet-o-fish is a delicious sandwich invented for a truly spiritual reason…and I actually enjoy them…and the box clearly states the name of the sandwich…SO…, with that setup, I am all ready for one of these…
Flying Fish?
Here’s how it all went down:
My son Jeff pulls up to the drive-through window and orders a “Filet-O-Fish” for me.
“Flying fish?” The worker blurts back at us through the speaker.
“No, Filet of Fish!” my son says, more slowly this time…he then proceeds with the rest of the order and we get a grunt of acknowledgement in response. We pull up to the window, pay and get our bag of food, fast and easy…and as we head back onto the highway – leaving Beverly Hills Texas in our rear view mirror forever, I open the bag to grab my sandwich, and this is what I find in the bag:
An Actual “Filet-O-Fish!”
Yes, it was a filet-o-fish. Not a sandwich, no cheese or tartar sauce, just a filet-o-fish patty served inside a clear container, as if hermetically sealed from the other food.
I told Jeff to keep an eye on the road, then held it in front of him:
And we just laughed and laughed and laughed….what could I do? It’s called a Filet-O-Fish – that’s the way it is described on the menu!
Well, not everything on our trip was food based.
If you’ve missed some of my previous stories about this “trip across America”, including the “Gunfight At The OK Corral” that never happened, you can see the rest here:
Let me know if you’ve had a strange fast food order!