The Hark-Aldonze ripostuary of antiphonal asininity
Episode 5: The Chicken Burger Guide to Crossed paths
The "Receipts" Taos Green Chili | Chef Aldonze posts Bonjour Haark! Greetings from Aldonze. Chef Aldonze-Luiz (Loo-eeze)! Today my heart is filled with joy. The mare thought that my humble lasagne gave such pleasure to your lovely wife and little daughter brings fears to my eyes. Of course, one with my talent gets complainants all the time, yet this was very special. I am truly splattered. Now to you, Mon Amigo! Of all your "stunts" with my receipts during our tiny time in saberspace, this is truly shameful. First you make Mary with the wine and then you do like a big dumbbell with my lasagne. Quel stupido! You must tell Aldonze the tooth. We can no longer continue if we are not toothsome with each other. How many bottles of the wine did you chug lug while my lasagne was cooking? One? Three? How many before you put a blowtorch into your mouth and pull the trigger? You some kind of crazy? This gives Aldonze much pain. I can do little for your drinking problem but I can give you some good hung over receipts. They are very famouse and they have stunned many doctors. 90 per cent effective in clerical tests. Only 10 per cent fatalities. Pretty good, non? And they are yours to Webify soon! Meandertime, I wish you a speed recouping as I am most pathetic to your condition. Aldonze is nothing if not insensitive. I resume by now you have recovered enough to sign my check and it is on its way. Now, I would like to comet on your remark. Yes, it is true that Aldonze has left death and destructiveness in my behind. I mediate upon this many times. I always come to the preclusion that Aldonze has a good heart and would never harm anyone. Perhaps it is fete. In life one must take the goods with the bad. Aldonze always picks himself up and spreads joy with the food. That is my only agender. Remember that old appendage, "Not every cloud has a slivered alignment." Now to the business. I have never been found of the lowly American hamburger. Many years ago, when Aldonze was very young, I was on my way to the big city of Chicago to become head chef of a famouse hotel. I was driving an old VW buggie through the cornfields of Nebraska. Aldonze was happy but hungry. Suddenly I came upon a sign that said "Cafe/Gas/ Best Burgers in the World". There were many big trucks parked outside so in I go. But all was not well. The people at counter and tables were kicking up a ruckus. It seems the owner/cook had caught his young wife doing love with his meat driver and chased him off with a shotgun. I could hear the sobs the woman upstairs. The poor man was upset as he had no meat for his famouse burgers. The customers were throwing things and maybe even fight. I entered the kitchen and presented myself. He give me a pretty scary look. He said he could not cook burgers today and customers were plenty mad. All he had was chicken. Aldonze took the charge. Necessary became the father of instruction. Within minutes I created Chicken Burger Aldonze. Customers look weary at first but after first bite they no longer want meat burgers. Big business that day and everyone leave happy. Even the young wife upstairs stop crying. I tell the man to go to his wife and Aldonze would clean up, for any good chef leaves the kitchen emasculate. He thank me and tell me not to forget turning off gas valve for stove. I clean up real nice, leave quietly and drive away. Aldonze was pleased to give so many people happymess. Two hours later I remember that I forget the gas valve. Later I hear the news that the Cafe bang almighty and burn down. Lucky the man and wife escaped with their lives. Years later, I hear he opened 25 fast food joints (with insurance bucks) featuring my Chicken Burger with secret sauce. He became rich and famouse because of Aldonze. His wife finally ran away with a liquor salesman. I was going to sew him for stealing my receipt but I do not think it good because of the gas valve thing. Non? And now I leave you with a hint for your blasted mouth and the black tong. In Taos the medicine man tell me that sucking on lemons is most curative. This will help you and you must do it. The acidity from the lemon might cause little pinches of pain but you should do it anyway ... or was it Papaya? Try the lemon first! I have a big surprise receipt for you next time. Until then I remain Aldonze. Chef Aldonze-Luiz (Loo-eeze) at your service! | Harold Hark's ghosts Bonjour yourself! Moments after regaining the use of my mouth for other than moaning, I am again rendered speechless by your latest tale of the origins of Chicken Burger Aldonze. There is indeed an ill wind blowing between us. And not only does it howl between the continents separating our formerly robust bodies, but over the sands of time as well. Our paths, it would seem, have crossed before. Well, almost. You see, I was that "meat driver"! I shudder to relate this story, long buried in the hell of previously unrecoverable memory. In my travels of yore, I spent some years in Umeruhca, working at odd jobs to get by. As I had no green card and not enough money to be regarded as a tourist, I was forced to work black. This put me at the mercy of scumbag conservative employers who liked nothing more than to present starvation wages on pay day. During a period of extended impecuniosity in which I was forced to travel by boxcar, I had the misfortune to encounter a corpse. (Unlike yourself, this corpse was not made so of my doing!) It was an unforgettable moment that I soon forgot completely ... until the arrival of your latest receipt. The wind whistled eerily through the broken slats of the empty boxcar as I rifled the poor man's pockets for a crust of bread, a morsel of pimento loaf, a mote of cheese, anything to rekindle my hopes and dreams. From a rear pocket I retrieved a small cloth sack which contained a one dollar bill and various papers of identification. "Hot damn!" I exclaimed, using a favoured expression of the region. There, at the extension of my gaze was a social security card and a driver's license. As these were the days before photos were affixed, I was in no danger of not being taken for the man that I was not but about to become. I departed the boxcar of mixed blessings as the train eased into the next city. There, as Umeruhcan citizen Frank Garfield, I proceeded to look for work. I soon landed a job as a tool, die and rivet salesman with the RB&W Nut and Bolt Company. It was while delivering a case of lug nuts to a mechanic in a nearby town that I happened upon that roadside diner. No sooner had I seated myself on a torn Naugahyde stool at the counter, salivating in anticipation of a double cheeseburger and fries, than a vision of loveliness appeared holding a burnt-sienna coffee pot. "Coffee?" was the first word the immaculately coiffed Cora Turner ever spoke to me. Hopelessly smitten, I searched the city for work that would allow me to visit the diner on a regular basis. In no time, I was driving for Peck's Meat Packers. The wages were good and my boss, Pete Peck, was a bonzer bloke, if a little strange. He seemed incapable of looking at you full on. Instead he stood in profile and had the peculiar habit of putting his arms straight out before him as if he were going to shake the hands of two people at once. In truth, he looked like a cartoon character. Anyway, I chatted up Cora from the beginning and soon we were in mad, passionate love. Her husband, Cecil, was often away and, during closing hours, she would throw the vacuum cleaner aside and we would make mad, passionate love on the counter, the tables, the stairway to their rooms above and, sometimes, on the chopping block in the kitchen. At length I proposed we run away. She agreed, but being a lass from the scumbag conservative corn belt, opted for a more sensible plan. She wanted us to murder old Cece, make it look like an accident and carry on with the business. I was horrified ... me a cook? But not too horrified to overcome the insistence of my throbbing cobber (I am Australian, after all) who forced us back upstairs for another round of mad, passionate love. Alas, Cecil began to smell the rat that was myself. One day I arrived with a truckload of ground round. Before unloading, I made the fatal mistake of leaning over the counter and playfully slapping Cora on her ample bottom. Cece had seen it from the kitchen and came roaring out with his shotgun. I fled the cafe to the boos and hisses of the customers. Mounting the mad meat truck passionately, I sped back to Peck's where, offering my sincerest apologies, I grabbed my parting cheque and caught a bus to Colorado. From there I boarded a plane for Australia and left Umeruhca forever. The thought that shortly thereafter you arrived from the opposite direction is enough to make me reach for the gun I would have if I still lived in your adopted country and fulfil poor Cecil's desire! Yours, in unwanted memories. PS: My wife and daughter will be trying your Chicken Burger very soon. I, however, shall play it safe with canned Tamales and a few jalapeños. You'll not be putting my life in jeopardy this time! |