In Loving Memory of Robert A. George and Donald R. George

Chapter One
1
Sherman hated his town, he hated his life, but most of all, he hated his job.
He looked across the counter at his next customer. “Would you like fries
with that?”
“Ha!” The woman grinned and bounced on her heels. “They actually
said that back then?—I mean, back now?—I mean—well, you know what
I mean.”
Most customers melted into a blur to Sherman, but not this one.
Underneath an explosion of brunette curls, her brown eyes glittered with a
puppy-like enthusiasm, which Sherman found unusual for a middle-aged
woman. Not much more than his own height of five-foot-four, she wore
denim overalls over a passable figure. It wasn’t her appearance that made
her stand out for Sherman; it was her attitude. She acted like she had never
been in a McDonald’s before.
She looked up at the menu board again. “Wait! Can I change that
order? Instead of a Filet-Zero-Fish can I have a Big Mac?”
“You mean Filet-O-Fish?” Sherman just couldn’t help but correct her.
“That’s an ‘O’? Whatever.” She flipped her hand as if brushing away
the correction. “So, what’s on a Big Mac anyway?”
Sherman put his weight on his other sore foot. Linoleum might
disguise the floor, but standing eight hours a day on it made him painfully
aware it was solid concrete. “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce,
cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun.”
The woman’s eyes widened as Sherman rattled off the tongue twister.
“Oooh! Can you repeat that?” She reached into her hip pocket and pulled
out what looked like a small calculator and held it in her hand.
Sherman fought the urge to sigh and repeated the burger mantra more
slowly this time. Surely, he thought, she had heard the commercials.
“One can hardly go to a real McDonald’s Hamburger Restaurant and
not have a legendary Big Mac. By the way, what’s today?”
“Saturday.”
“I mean the date.”
“Uh… May eighteenth.”
“1985, right?”
“Well, yeah….” Sherman frowned at the question.
“At least I got the date right, but I obviously missed Mount Saint