When I was a couple
weeks shy of my nineteenth birthday, the air force sent me to Keesler Air Force
Base at Biloxi, Mississippi. Basic
training in Texas had transformed me from a civilian into an air force enlisted
man; at a school in Mississippi, the air force was going to turn me into an
electronics technician.
Biloxi is on the Gulf
Coast, near the western end of an arc of coastline that today is called the
Redneck Riviera. Casinos dominate the
area these days, but I remember the place as a strip of waterfront with a nice
beach, a few restaurants, and a large multi-use hall operated by the USO, the
United Service Organizations. The USO is
a charity enterprise that often serves as the GI’s home away from home. I appreciated the Biloxi USO building as a
quiet place off base where I could sit in a comfortable chair and read.
Once a month, on
payday, I rode a bus from the base into Biloxi and ate dinner at a beach-front
restaurant. I always ate the same
thing: chicken-fried steak. I don’t remember the air force mess halls
serving chicken-fried steak; nor do I remember eating it at home, but somewhere
along the way I had tasted it and become hooked on it.
Why not? It was tasty although being of dubious,
probably negative, health benefits; tasty
is all that counted. Back then most of
us knew little about cholesterol, and the word triglycerides could have referred to a kid’s toy. I like it, folks, and I’m gonna eat it.
And it was
popular. I spent most of my first year
in the air force stationed in the Deep South, and restaurant menus there gave
me the impression that chicken-fried steak was the national dish of the
Confederate States of America.
So here I am, a
lifetime later, once a week going to Perko’s to eat chicken-fried steak. If you’re unfamiliar with this culinary
delight, you can watch a YouTube video and see how a piece of beefsteak is breaded
and fried and served with a cream gravy.
Right there I can start to feel my arteries begin to clog up. I get it with green beans and a baked potato
slathered with butter and sour cream, more clogging of arteries, and a glass, okay
two, of cabernet.
Of course, it’s not a
good meal for a diabetic, or anyone for that matter, and it’s definitely not
top-tier dining.
But it comes with a
fringe benefit: good old Christian guilt. Christ may have died for my sins, but I’m willing
to be that he didn’t know one of them would be chicken-fried steak.
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