Osler's Razor

In Waco, I lived just off Valley Mills Drive, which was loaded with fast food places-- I was with in a few miles of four kinds of fried chicken, several burger joints (including McDonald's, BK, Jack-In-The-Box, Wendy's, and Backyard Burgers), both a Taco Bell and a Taco Bueno, a Subway, a Quizno's, a Little Caesar's, a Papa John's, Chik-Fil-A, Luby's, a chicken finger place, Long John Silver's, Sonic, Baskin-Robbins, Wild Wings, Double Dave's, and an Arby's (among others-- those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head). Here there is... nothing. Well, nothing I have seen yet, within the same distance from my house.

Instead, there is an amazing variety of grocery stores. Nearby I have Byerly's (gorgeous; kind of a food museum), Lund's (much like Byerly's but a little cheaper), the amazing new Linden Hills food co-op, Jerry's (which is kind of stuck in the 70's), Cub Food, and a Super Target. This is a sharp contrast from Waco, which offered only H.E.B. stores and a Wal-Mart.

Believe me, I miss my fried chicken. I have looked and looked for some. In Waco, my neighborhood smelled like chicken, and to me that was a good thing!

Still... I am learning to live with this slow food thing. It has its advantages, I suppose. I wonder, though-- why is there this inverse proportionality between fast food and grocery stores?

I was at Lund's recently, looking at cheeses, and one of the very pleasant employees came over to help. On a whim, I asked her if there was a KFC nearby.

She looked at me for a second, then gravely told me she would be right back. I waited, wondering what would happen next-- were they going to throw me out of the store?

A few minutes later, she returned, looking relieved. "There isn't one in Edina," she said, shaking her head, "but my manager has seen one on Cleveland Street in St. Paul." St. Paul is on the other side of the Mississippi River, on the far side of Minneapolis.

I must have looked a little shaken, because she gently offered to get me a recipe to fry my own chicken, but I declined. At some point, after all, ya gotta take the hint.