Food Fights At The Red Barn Were One Thing But Fire Fights At Guns And Buns Could Spoil Your Lunch

                                    

For today’s travel, we are not going to the Middle East.

Back in the day, I was among the cool kids who spent Friday evenings cruising Main Street in their shiny, full-sized examples of Detroit’s best.

Anyone remember those days where the primary pastime was the boys watching the girls watching the boys while driving miles and miles but never going anywhere?   (Obviously this was pre $4.50/gal gas.) The era was well represented in the iconic 1973 film, American Graffiti, directed by George Lucas, of Star Wars fame.

I was there, right in the middle of these cool kids driving up and down the street. When it was time to stop, it was me that they hungered for.  It was me that they came to talk to. It was me that they got out of their cars to come see.

And it was me that was wearing the funky red apron and hat and stood behind the counter at the local Red Barn restaurant–think McDonald’s but less cool–and it was me who literally got to ask these cool kids,

“Would you like fries with your order?”

I was the epitome of the un-cool.  No car. No girl. No letter jacket. And stuck at a minimum-wage job on a Friday night.

Sometimes after we closed and were supposed to be cleaning up, someone would fling a fry at another worker and once in a while it would escalate into a full-blown aerial assault of artery-clogging, congealed-fat coated food items.

What brought me back to those fond memories of my supreme nerdness was a recent story of another hamburger joint, but this one in Beirut, Lebanon.

At this new place, I would worry less about a food fight and be a lot more concerned about a fire fight outside the front door, especially given it’s locale.

But I will have to give it to the proprietors; they opted to capitalize on the current situation by calling the place Buns and Guns, which garnered some free publicity in the process.  Given the 25,000 Google hits, apparently a whole lot of publicity.

The name might conjure up an image of a Middle Eastern version of a Hooters with buxom waitresses wearing ultra-short shorts while packing heat on their hip in the form of a 9mm, but considering the religious fervor in that region of the world, they probably were just thinking about the standard faire of bread rolls and the run-of-the-mill weaponry you would find at any fast food restaurants that happen to be in a tough neighborhood: just your normal complement of AK-47 Klashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Of what’s left of my 1,000 places to see, I would love to visit the Middle East, but I think I will give it a few more years for us to be welcomed with open arms and gratitude for allowing American-style democracy to break out over there.

For now, I am hesitant to visit someplace where if the stray bullets don’t kill you, the cholesterol might.

Hey, that’s not me saying that…it’s the slogan right there on their sign.