{"id":19467,"date":"2011-04-20T11:30:29","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T17:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19467"},"modified":"2011-04-20T12:10:38","modified_gmt":"2011-04-20T18:10:38","slug":"sliding-into-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19467","title":{"rendered":"Sliding Into History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in college in North Dakota, I first encountered White Castle on a bitterly cold January Friday night.\u00a0 A bunch of students from Chicago decided they&#8217;d gone long enough without &#8220;sliders&#8221;.\u00a0 A few of them decided they&#8217;d undertake the sixteen-hour one-way trip back to Chi to get some, and maybe bring some back.\u00a0\u00a0 Helpfully, a Minneapolis kid told them there were Castles in the Twin Cities, cutting the trip in much less than half. So they took off, around 11PM.\u00a0 And came back early the next afternoon, happy.<\/p>\n<p>There are two morals to that story:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>College kids in North Dakota in the 1980&#8217;s who didn&#8217;t have girlfriends or parties on the agenda could go really stir crazy.<\/li>\n<li>White Castle generates incredible customer loyalty.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One of my English professors, Dr. Brucker, had White Castle as a hobby.\u00a0 He somehow had wangled a subscription to the White Castle in-house magazine, and knew more White Castle trivia than anyone seemed to need.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1011\/719801815_d4900a8759.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"311\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t actually eat one myself until I moved to the Twin Cities.\u00a0 The Sunday after I moved into my first apartment, not far off of East Lake Street, I wandered up to Lake and 36th, and saw the white tile cube, and figured it was worth a try.<\/p>\n<p>I ordered four cheese sliders and a coke, and sat down.\u00a0 A few moments later, as I was waiting for my order, a big fella &#8211; probably 6&#8217;2 and 350 pounds &#8211; walked in and loudly and sloppily proclaimed &#8220;I just got paid!\u00a0 Gimme thirty sliders and a large Coke!&#8221;.\u00a0 As I sampled my first sliders &#8211; yum! &#8211; I watched, just a tad amazed, as the big guy bolted the whole order down and staggered up the street.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/48\/139130633_2f6f325d6c.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thanksgiving Dinner, in some parts of Chicago.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>And back when I was producing the Don Vogel show?\u00a0 We marked all major celebrations &#8211; good ratings books, last days before fun vacations, whatever &#8211; with Don flipping me a $20 and sending me to the &#8216;Castle on White Bear Avenue for sliders and scabs for the whole crew.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.qsrweb.com\/article\/179899\/White-Castle-marks-90th-anniversary\">White Castle just turned 90<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The restaurant chain, famous for its original sliders, first opened its doors March 10, 1921, in Wichita, Kan. The now Columbus, Ohio-based company is family-owned and does not franchise. It also owns its own meat production facilities and bakeries to ensure quality control.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;White Castle is proud to be 90 years young,&#8221; said Jamie Richardson, vice president of corporate and government relations. &#8220;Since 1921, White Castle has remained true to its original mission and values. Our name says it all \u2014 White signifying purity and Castle signifying strength and permanence.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I do about 1-2 trips a year to White Castle.\u00a0 One thing that <em>has <\/em>changed; 25 years ago, it used to be entertaining to watch the guys behind the grill stuffing sliders into the little cardboard boxes like Las Vegas card dealers, banging through a couple a second.\u00a0 I haven&#8217;t seen that in a <em>long <\/em>time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway &#8211; gassy-but-happy America salutes you, White Castle!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in college in North Dakota, I first encountered White Castle on a bitterly cold January Friday night.\u00a0 A bunch of students from Chicago decided they&#8217;d gone long enough without &#8220;sliders&#8221;.\u00a0 A few of them decided they&#8217;d undertake the sixteen-hour one-way trip back to Chi to get some, and maybe bring some back.\u00a0\u00a0 Helpfully, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,23,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faiths-and-their-followers","category-geekery","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19467"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19474,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19467\/revisions\/19474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}