This is Not About the Apple Pan

I thought, given my trip to the Apple Pan, that I would be writing something I'll call hamburger porn, which is more drippy and muscular than your average food porn and what you might find in the pages of Esquire adjacent to a homo-eroticized torso selling cologne. I thought I would be disparaging the fussy little burgers from Umami and all the other burgers resting on beds of laurels organically grown from trend-setting gardens. I thought I would be extolling the tang of an Apple Pan burger, a tang derived from a dill relish and catsup sauce (hardly secret as sauces go). Figured I would describe how the Apple Pan’s inch-thick wedge of iceberg trumps, on any given day, the stingy helping of greens most fashionable burgers wilt on contact. Reckoned, in general, I would be focusing on how a good burger is one that knows how to make juicy what should be juicy, and how to keep dry that which should stay dry.

Then, of course, in the interest of countering myself, I figured I would have had to veer off to discuss my general problem with eating for nostalgia’s sake, which often chooses to overlook the inherent issues with a place and its food. For example, if I were to have been able to write a straightforward hamburger piece, I would have complained about the Apple Pan’s modes of delivery: The way the burger is half-wrapped in paper— with no accompanying utensils, and just the tiniest institutional napkins— means that you pretty much have to eat it all without setting it down. No savoring in that. But since I couldn’t write that, I also couldn’t complain about the perfunctory service, the stifling heat of the so-called quaint (read: un-air-conditioned) space, or the amount of trash the Apple Pan must produce given the cardboard trays that the fries and accompanying catsup are delivered on as well as the paper cone (cute or stupid?) from which I drank my Diet Coke. I simply won’t write about how the smell of an Apple Pan burger lingers for hours on your hands even after you wash them.

Nope. I can’t write any of that. Instead I have to write a human interest piece. Why? because I forgot that the Apple Pan is cash only, which is one more way that old-fashioned gives way to frustration. Luckily for the cash-poor diner there is a Bank of America right next door. Oh, but wait… I had forgotten my ATM card in my parenting backpack and I was carrying, instead, my teaching backpack. The morning had been frantic, with my son wailing about having to go to preschool and with me hustling to get a lesson plan together for my composition class, which I taught prior to burgertime. Not to mention that I had a lot on my mind: the reality that my son needs to be assessed for learning disabilities, for example, or the never-ending to-do list for our new home, or the large stack of papers that needed to be graded over the weekend. Why wasn’t I carrying cash? Because I wasn’t, so lay off. How could I stick my ATM card into the parenting backpack without replacing it in my wallet? Because my mind was trying to hold on to a million thoughts at once, so I can’t really write about the white, wrap-around counter, which is the only seating, or the metal behemoth of a cash register, which must be a relic from the Apple Pan’s founding in 1947. 

Above all, I have to write about Deke, a gentleman dressed in casual pinstriped broadcloth and khaki who sat down next to me and proceeded to tuck into his newspaper in a way that said closed for conversation. Of course, I felt bad interrupting his lunchtime reading with the question, meekly asked, Is the Apple Pan cash only? Yet I had to ask as a glimmer of memory made me panic three bites in to the burger (with all the snap and juice of lettuce and beef, the Tillamook added a smooth creaminess to the composition) I really can’t write about. His reply was something like, “I don’t know, but don’t worry about it. Enjoy your food first and talk to the man later.” I’m sure he saw the sheer dread in my eyes as I pawed through my backpack looking for my ATM card. I nervously dipped my golden, medium cut fries in the huge mound of Heinz hastily poured for me by the server as I imagined myself wearing a paper hat and peeling potatoes in the back while the rest of the restaurant workers made fun of me in Spanish. Gringa estúpida no tiene dinero.

When my check was delivered, so was Deke’s. He settled my tab as well with no prompting. Just a shrug and I’ll get this one, too to the man behind the counter. Deke must have had a good nose for desperation, which, I’m sure, was fairly leaking from my pores. We chatted then about USC and writing and real estate. I had a stack of student papers in front of me that I was trying to read and keep free of catsup smears. The point is, I can’t write about a burger joint, not when the number of texts devoted to hamburger porn grossly outnumber the burgers worth lusting for. Moreover, I especially can’t dedicate the words of this essay to the task of deconstructing the Apple Pan eating experience when what is really important is that a man I didn’t even know bought me lunch because I showed up at a cash-only restaurant with no cash. There are burgers and kindness out there that defy expectations. Thanks, Deke. I’ll do what I can to pay the karma forward.