“Death to Chain Restaurants,” or how one evening at Taco Bell (circa 2005) radicalized me

“Death to Chain Restaurants,” or how one evening at Taco Bell (circa 2005) radicalized me

I’ve meant to tell this story many times over the years. Earlier this week the topic arose at Facebook in the form of a comment, and it strikes me as the perfect opportunity to elaborate here at my web site.

Today’s time travel takes us to around 2005, although it might have been 2004. I’m sure it was some point just after we moved into our current home, which was late 2003.

Our work schedules were a great deal more hectic and less predictable then, and while I haven’t patronized fast food eateries to any great degree since the 1980s, Taco Bell was an occasional option for us under the banner of “fast and cheap.”

That’s the only real reason to periodically suspend one’s animus toward chain (as opposed to genuinely indie) businesses, right? 

After work one night my wife Diana stopped at the Taco Bell on Charlestown Road in New Albany, the one near Twin Oaks Drive. She went through the drive-thru, was waved to the side to park and wait for the order to be completed, then sat for almost a half-hour for food that obviously had been lost or forgotten.

She is not a shrinking violet, and went inside to remonstrate, only...Read more