In 1921, Walter Anderson of Wichita, Kansas had a dream. He dream t of a place where families with meager means, and hungry bellies could eat and relax. A glorious place where finicky children weren't castigated with a bowl of gruel and Brussels Sprouts, but rather delighted with seeing a pyramid of charming, palm-sized "sliders" that were delicious and fun to eat. Anderson's vision of an immaculately clean, unique and friendly hamburger stand was exactly what America needed. It would be hard for Anderson though - Americans were under the presupposition that beef was dirty because of an Upton Sinclair novel called "Jungle", a book exposing the poor sanitary conditions of the meat industry. But, Anderson's restraunts fluorished and America realized it was wrong about the beef. The beef was not dirty. But fast-forward 87 years, and you come to realize that the restaurant itself - the once shining-white, crenelated institution that perpetually smelled of onions - is now smeared in a fetid shit that is so thick and vile, that it cannot be washed off. The smell of onions has gone, and has been replaced by the putrid odor of the excrement of dying souls who sleep in the cold, dirty plastic seats that have been defiled by bar-hoppers' farts and vomit. The happy, shining faces behind the porcelain counters during the twenties have been replaced today by the hopeless and wingless liaisons of the angel Lucifer himself -catatonic shells of unwashed human beings. The staff no longer smile while wearing crisp white paper hats. A woman working at a White Castle these days is a pitiful, greasy heap of flesh and fat. Their brains beneath a hair-net are piloted by maggots, and their eyes are nothing but tunnels of despair. They no longer remember if you are a regular customer, or if your son is allergic to peanuts. They operate by looking at colored pictures with corresponding numbers. The modern White Castle has become more reminiscent of a cafeteria in Sing-Sing penitentiary, then an established family fast food restaurant. In fact, it is more likely you will get shivved or slashed in a White Castle men's room, than in Sing-Sing. In White Castle, no one watches your back. How did this happen?
Roman Gladiators, were a rough and tumble crowd. They were required to fight two or three times a year. They were criminals, prisoners..the unwanted sect of society. They fought for their lives as spectators looked on and laughed and jeered. These gladiators did not give a shit. They had no God, no hope.. they sailed a sea of darkness. There was nothing left inside a gladiators heart except for the will to stay alive.
It is the same for a modern day White Castle patron.
First let me begin by saying that you will never go into a White Castle unless you are drunk. There has not been a sober person eating in a White Castle since the mid 50's, before the Vietnam war began, when life was good, and burgers were five cents. Inebriation is one reason for the violence that often occurs in White Castle. Here the modern, drunk patron and the Gladiator share a common bond. It is documented that the early gladiators would drink mead or barley wine before subjecting themselves to what could be either their death or triumph. So the drunkenness often brings about the most primal instincts of a White Castle visitor, an instinct that can only be subdued by being punched in the chest, or by sleeping.
When you walk into a White Castle at 3 am., you have two choices..and it's not Coke or Sprite. It's fight, or flight. You can stand in line, and subject yourself to a torrent of slander, incomprehensible idioms, and stares, or you could hide in the restroom, with that log of shit with the hypodermic syringe sticking out of it that some human-animal placed upon the toilet seat. I would not know anything about prison, but I would have to suppose that waiting for food at White Castle at 3 am is a lot like a timid old man being paraded to his cell for the first time. Urine raining down upon him, insults coming at him from all angles, the fear of the unknown, the fear of being stripped and raped, the fear of dying in this place, alone. White Castle - this early in the morning - is a powder keg of epic proportions, where anyone or anything could potentially be the start of the domino effect. Something as simple as dropping a chicken ring onto someones boot could escalate into a full scale riot situation. Once again, one finds themselves in the boots of their Gladiator predecessors..inside the bowels of a castle, fighting for life and limb, as the horde absentmindedly cheers, with chalices of coke lifted high. A king menacingly strokes his pet weasel. You feel your back being pelted with cabbage and rotten fruit. A cool wind blows up your tunic, evaporating the sweat trickling between the cheeks of your buttocks.
