As we stood by the gourmet hot dog truck, Booper McCarthy ate his hot dog with relish with relish. Every month at the Ordinary Times New England Campus, Will Truman—Editor-In-Chief, raconteur, noted conversationalist and magnanimous Chief Executive Officer that he was—would bring in various food trucks, station them about the central quadrangle and provide free lunches to the entirety of his staff.
We never saw him at these events, but we knew that he looked down upon us benevolently, holed up like a Chinese emperor in his penthouse office in Building One, smiling contentedly at his placid domain.
“Do you know,” Booper asked, with a gobful of hot dog and a determined squadron of relish chunks clinging to his corpulent face. “What is my favorite cuisine?”
“Well,” I said. “I know you are a great lover of the Korean. Is it that?”
“It is true that I am, but it is also true that it is not,” said he.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “Is it the Eritrean? I have seen you consume Tsebhi Birsen in quantity.”
“That too is a cuisine I love but it is not my favorite.”
“Is it the Hungarian, then?”
“I prefer the term Magyar, and I do enjoy a well made halászlé, but it is neither that,” he said.
“Well, then, man, I am at a loss! What is this cuisine so favored by one Booper McCarthy?”
“Chicken wings,” he said with a contentedly triumphant smile upon his face. “When it comes to cuisine the chicken wing is your only man. Consider his constituent parts. The drumette. Meaty. Easy to hand. Fine for dipping. The flat. Cooks evenly on the grill. Bones removed easily once the technique is learned. The wing tip. Useful in a flavorful stock or broth.
“Consider, also,” he said. “The utility of his flesh on the issue of flavor. How is your man the wing cooked? Is he fried, roasted, steamed? Is he brined beforehand, this friend that you know and that I know? How is he to be sauced after he is cooked? All these considerations live in the mind of the chicken wing artist.”
“And are you,” I said. “My friend, such an artist yourself?”
“I am an amateur, for the time being, but if I had access to a commissary kitchen and a truck to act as point-of-sale, I think a profit could be made, given time.”
Booper leaned in close.
“Do you know that I have certain notions,” Booper said. “I have certain theories about the procurement of the chicken wings which, if employed, would provide a steady profit to every investor so enlightened?”
We began walking back to Building Three where our offices were.
“Would you expound upon these notions and theories, as you say?” I said. “You recall I am a graduate of that hallowed institution, Le Cordon Bleu.”
“For you?” Booper said. “Of course I would! Here is the thing itself. Are you a right handed man?”
“I am, that,” said I.
“As am I,” said Booper. “As are most persons. Do you know that, just as we are right or left handed, the chicken has a dominant right or left wing? It is Gospel truth, I tell you. These dominant wings are the more well developed. Meatier, and thus more desirable.”
“That is all well and good,” I said. “But how can one discern the wings of a right-wing dominant chicken from a left-wing dominant chicken?”
“The law of averages, my man!” Booper said triumphantly. “As ninety percent of chickens are right winged, one merely buys a package of wings—the all three bits connected kind, naturally—which contains the greatest number of right wings!”
“And, so, Booper,” I said. “How do you intend to turn a profit with this scheme?”
“The spice of life,” said Booper. “Variety! Buffalo Wings? By the herd, my man. The sweet and the sour? The both with flying colors. So hot your bowels will napalm the toilet? Like the heart of the sun. Satay? Variously curried? All the men you could ask for.”
“Now,” I said. “What side dishes will you offer?”
“I have just the man,” said Booper. “None other than the Potato Toddlers, just your men to help the wings down.”
“The what now?” I asked.
“The Potato Toddlers? Your common lads the Tater Tots, but more properly called. Potato Toddlers.”
“Will you be putting this on the side of your truck just like that? Potato Toddlers?”
“Why would I not?” asked Booper, aghast.
Thus, it was settled. Booper took some money he’d been given by his gran and bought a food truck of some quality. As his gran had made some good money to lay in this venture, he had—in his, I hesitate to say, wisdom—the food truck was modified so that it could attain speeds well in excess of 130 miles per hour as well as handle even the roughest of off-road terrain. The thing was a beast.
The truck got off to an inauspicious start, however, when, on its first day as a going concern, there was a fire of no small significance. We’d just passed the sign on US-6 that said, “Entering Dennis”—always gave us a good laugh, that—when something came loose in the back of the truck and was audibly bouncing around.
We pulled over.
Sure enough it was a box of the syrup for our Moxie soda for the drinking fountain. Somehow, the cardboard box it was in had caught fire, though it was a small one.
“Do you know,” said Booper, “That the Moxie is the only 19th Century medicinal soda that still tastes like medicine? I find that odd.”
“Now, Bopper McCarthy,” said I, “I scarcely think the good people at The Coca Cola Company would appreciate you so besmirching the reputation of a regional delicacy beloved by old people and those tortured into acquiring a taste for the stuff!”
“Well, now,” said he, “have you noticed the particularly acrid, bitter smell we’re getting at this moment? I blame is on the use of gentian root—”
Here the conversation was interrupted by a small explosion and a not insignificant fire.
It turns out that, prior to its admixture of carbonated water, the Moxie syrup is highly inflammable.
We did not enjoy being on the news that evening.
That said, a man once said that there is no such thing as bad press, and so it was with Booper and his chicken truck, as the very next day he was contacted by the organizers of a festival called Burning Person held annually in unincorporated and uninhabited Second College Grant, New Hampshire.
And so it was that some weeks later, with extra portions of Booper’s Napalm Pooper Sauce in hand—which we made at Booper’s insistence based entirely on the name of the festival—we arrived in Second College Grant to find a gathering no less strange than the Gathering of the Juggalos, however the people of that debauch and this would never deign to countenance each other, though so similar were they that the only chasm that separated them was socioeconomic.
The only person to complain about our truck was the poor gent who provided the portable toilets, as the Napalm Pooper Sauce was a remarkable hit.
All was going well until a noise trio called Half-Astronaut were performing using an unholy combination of emergency test tones, air horns and high-pitched electronic screeches so loud that Booper was able to absolve himself of full responsibility for the portable toilet problem.
The band were not the source of the incident.
Due to circumstances which have never become clear, there was a small prop plane which crashed just near the festival grounds. As I’d wandered off into the woods to get as far from the cacophony as I humanly could, I was first upon the scene.
The festival goers assumed it was just part of the show.
But at the crash site, I quickly discerned that the plane was transporting a gallbladder to a hospital in Boston for transplant.
Did I know there was such a thing as an emergency gallbladder transplant? I did not.
Did I know of a method of transport that had refrigeration that might get the gallbladder in question to Boston in the time required? Indeed, I did.
Thus did Booper and I make a mad dash down I-93 to Boston to deliver a gallbladder to a hopeful recipient. Booper kindly provided the commissary meals. And when the patient woke up, he declared he’d had the best wings he’d ever tasted. He now supports the Buffalo Bills, begob!
Some time I’ll have to tell you about the time a debacle ensued from my production of Event Horizon: The Musical.
