Rant #2,415: Roll With It

So, what did you do on Memorial Day?

My family and I did something we had not done for three months: we took a drive out east, a 40-mile drive there, and a 40-mile drive back.

It all revolved around hamburger rolls ... yes, hamburger rolls.

We had planned to take a drive out east on the holiday, just pretty much get to a point, and then make a U-turn back home, without even getting out of the car. We planned on doing this just to break the monotony, but then came the hamburger rolls.

Or lack thereof.

What happened is that on occasion, my wife eats a hamburger, almost always of the turkey kind. She watches herself to a fault, and does not like to eat a lot of red meat, so turkey burgers are her choice of burger, but only every once in a while.

(I prefer regular beef hamburgers, but will eat turkey burgers on occasion, but not on the grill. My son only eats red meat hamburgers on the grill; he rarely has a burger otherwise.)

Along with her turkey hamburger, she does not eat regular hamburger rolls, she eats whole wheat hamburger rolls instead, and with or without a pandemic in place, they are usually more difficult to find than the regular hamburger rolls.

We usually have to search for them, but we usually find them. This time, we could not find them at all, even after going to a few stores to look for them.

Coming to the rescue was my wife's brother, who happens to work on the front lines at one of the larger supermarket chains on Long Island. He said that he can get the rolls for her from his store, and so, we now had a destination for our Memorial Day trip.

He lives about 40 miles away from us out in the middle of Suffolk County, so we took our jaunt out to his home to pick up the hamburger rolls.

Hey, it beat sitting in the house and watching TV, beat it by a long shot.

When we got there, we picked up the rolls ... and even though we had not seen each other since the winter, there was no kissing, no hugging, no hand shakes ... nothing of the sort.

Rather than pick up our hamburger rolls and run, we all decided to socialize in my brother in law's back yard.

We sat about six feet apart from each other, but no, we did not wear masks, although we did enter his home with the masks on.

After a while, they came off, and we ended up staying for more than an hour--so it was about an hour there, an hour getting there, and an hour coming home ... three hours eaten up by a drive to get hamburger rolls.

And after that, we ordered a holiday meal from a local eatery, waited to pick it up, and drove home with a holiday meal--and yes, I had a real, honest to goodness hamburger as my main dish, on a regular hamburger bun.

It was fun to get out and away from the house that we have been chained to for about three months. I felt real good behind the wheel. giving my car a workout it hadn't had since February.

But I have to tell you, with the weather being iffy the entire weekend--with little sun and lots of clouds and rain off an on--there were few cars on the road--few cars when we left for our jaunt, and few cars when we drove home.

You would have thought it was a mid-work-week early afternoon rather than a major holiday afternoon, but I have to say that Mother Nature was actually very kind to us. If the weather was really nice, you just know that everyone would have been out, going to the beach or just going somewhere to break the monotony.

I think that based on the up and down weather, people simply stayed home, or at least stayed local. And with what we are going through, maybe that is a good thing.

But as the weather gets better, you just know that even Mother Nature is not going to be able to stop people from venturing out and about, both locally and further away from their homes.

I think it is just something that we are going to have learn to live with. We aren't tempting fate as much as we are living our lives as human beings.

And in a state where you can play major league baseball but can't yet legally get a haircut at your local barber or beauty parlor, things that make no sense are being made "logical" by our leaders, but as I have said all along, once the warm weather comes, you can throw that all out the window.

It is already beginning to happen, and it will continue to happen, whether it is legal or not.

But that being said, it was sure nice to get out yesterday ...

... even if it was only to pick up a bag of hamburger rolls.