Shell Game

Don't you love it madly when it sleeps in your basement
On some gladly-pay-you-tuesday-for-a-hamburger-today shit

St. Louis county and the independent city of St. Louis. Nearly 1.4 million people. Over 550 square miles and there are two operating Wendy's. I say operating because there are directory listings for several others. Do you know what driving all over Chesterfield, Manchester, and Ellisville looking for a Wendy's gets you? We found the regional office. We found a Chipotle's that replaced a Wendy's. And we found a dark shape between Crazy Bowls 'N' Wraps and Taco Bell; a building with a familiar tiered form to its shingle, the board lessened without its bill. No smiling, manufactured redhead from Dublin, Ohio enticing customers with spicy chicken sandwiches and frosties. The construction of brick and lumber stood empty-handed in the night. No restaurant was there; it was a shell of a Wendy's, a thing bereft. I won't lie. It looked like murder. The empty black windows stared at me over the concrete. That tomb was the end of our search, of everyone's search, really. When you've stared at the skull you can be reasonably sure that the meat is gone.

We heard tales, hushed legends recounted by weary travelers on the road, that jr. bacon cheeseburgers could be had -- for a price. Like the treasure of the Sierra Madre, fortune may be found only at the end of a perilous journey. The trail is twenty miles long, winding its way almost to the riverfront, but there's gold in them hills. When the senior citizens ask you where the beef is, you tell them Florissant.