The Hess station at 346 Montauk Highway in Wainscott, NY is my refuge, a sanctuary from the mad hustle and bustle of the choked roads and beaches seen on a typical Hamptons summer day. Local lore has it that one desperate female city resident recently begged a Hess attendant to borrow a $2.29 bottle opener to pry the lid off the beer in her car and vowed to return it only to receive this full-service reply from her all-too-concerned attendant: ”Sorry, lady, then the bottle opener would be used and I couldn’t sell it.”
My car and I draw sustenance from Hess. The ever-present long lines inside filled with swaggering up-island workers, anxious immigrants and nervous local kids trying to buy cigarettes or beer with fake IDs stand in sharp contrast to the smug self confidence of the proud high and mighty that line up at the General Store in Sagaponack, NY. In keeping with my distinctly lower middle class values (and because I'm dead broke), I decided to conduct a medical experiment along the lines of the hit movie "Supersize Me." I would eat only Hess food for one week and document my body's changes.
DAY ONE: Chose the egg, bacon and cheese biscuit sandwich for breakfast. Despite numerous attempts to microwave it, the sandwich stubbornly refused to heat up and tasted like a flaky hockey puck. For lunch, I ate two overdone hot dogs that caused immediate heartburn and cessation of all feeling from below my waist. (This noble experiment was going to be tough on my marriage I mused.) Dinner choices were limited to a six-pack of Corona beer or the last lonely microwavable bacon cheeseburger that looked and tasted eerily similar to the aforementioned egg, bacon and cheese biscuit sandwich.
I asked the young female Russian attendant if Hess offered any salads and she replied, "We're not a restaurant, sir. We're a gas station." With the hot dogs from lunch still burning a hole in my gut, I conceded her point.
My next decision was a no-brainer. Despite the considerable risks to my nascent study's reliability and validity, I would eat healthy. I would drive to the McDonald's in Southampton, NY and order an Angus and continue my Hess food experiment tomorrow.
Next: Day Two of the Wainscott Hess Food Diet Causes the Author to Experience Acute Paranoid Schizophrenia
Look Around - Red Hot Chili Peppers
1 year ago
1 comment:
Baaahahaha. How's that angus burger treatin ya?
Let me be a little vulnerable here. I think I may have shed a tear when the krispy kreme's were no longer present at the local Hess. (I sometimes choose the Watermill station--which ever one is on my way to "where ever" when the BADASS BURB needs sustenance).
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