Cheeseburger, Fries, and a Vanilla Shake

Friends have often seemed surprised by the things I remember. Dates. Songs. Places. 

Tiny details from fifty or sixty years ago that most people would probably forget entirely. 

Sometimes I’ll mention an old restaurant, a particular afternoon, or the exact model of a car someone drove, and people look at me as if I’ve performed some kind of magic trick.

Honestly, I’ve never thought of it as anything remarkable.

Perhaps part of it comes from living alone here in Korea for so many years. Nostalgia becomes a kind of companion after a while. You sit in coffee shops. You walk through the city late at night. You hear an old song or smell something familiar drifting from a restaurant, and suddenly the past returns with surprising clarity. Some people collect photographs. Others keep journals. I suppose I collect memories.

And there are certain memories that remain vivid because they carried enormous importance at the time, even if they seem small now.

Like the first time I went to McDonald’s and had a cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake.

It must have been sometime around 1965 or maybe 1966. I was about eight years old. My grandparents and I were driving back to Illinois after visiting relatives near St. Louis, heading north along Route 51 through Bloomington-Normal.

That alone feels like another world now.

Back then, road trips felt longer. The highways seemed endless. Cars were enormous machines made of heavy steel and chrome, built less for fuel efficiency than for surviving a direct artillery hit. My grandfather drove a big orange Plymouth with tailfins that looked like something from a science fiction movie. Sitting in the backseat as a kid felt like riding inside a moving living room.

Then I saw them.

The Golden Arches.

To children growing up in small Midwestern towns during the 1960s, McDonald’s still felt almost magical. Fast food was not yet ordinary. It was an event. A reward. Something special connected somehow to modern America itself.

The moment I spotted those arches rising beside the road, I started bouncing around the backseat begging my grandparents to stop. Well, bouncing as much as a kid could bounce inside a giant two-door Plymouth without getting yelled at. My grandparents, being grandparents, didn’t require much convincing.

I still remember my grandfather carefully steering that massive car into the parking lot. Cars back then required actual driving skills. None of today’s backup cameras or electronic sensors. Just instinct, patience, and a lot of turning radius. Those old cars floated across pavement like battleships.

Once we parked, my grandmother had to fold the front seat forward so I could climb out of the back. She pressed a dollar into my hand and off I went toward McDonald’s feeling as if I were entering some kind of American paradise.

A cheeseburger wrapped in paper. Hot fries. A cold vanilla shake.

Simple things.

But when you are eight years old, sometimes simple things feel enormous.

My grandmother later loved telling people how wide I was smiling when I came back to the car holding that food. Apparently I looked happier than any human being had a right to look over a cheeseburger and fries.

And maybe I was.

Sitting there in the backseat of that Plymouth eating McDonald’s while traffic rolled past on Route 51 remains one of those strange small moments preserved perfectly in memory. Not because history was being made. Not because anything dramatic happened. But because childhood has a way of transforming ordinary experiences into permanent emotional landmarks.

I think that is what nostalgia really is in the end. Not longing for grand moments. But for the feeling of discovering happiness in small things before life became complicated.

A cheeseburger. Fries. A vanilla shake.

And the paradise of being young enough to believe moments like that might last forever.