Roast Beef, Medium

MP3 Audio CD. Roast Beef, Medium

I

ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM


There is a journey compared to which the travels of Bunyan's hero were a
summer-evening's stroll. The Pilgrims by whom this forced march is
taken belong to a maligned fraternity, and are known as traveling men.
Sample-case in hand, trunk key in pocket, cigar in mouth, brown derby
atilt at an angle of ninety, each young and untried traveler starts on
his journey down that road which leads through morasses of chicken a
la Creole, over greasy mountains of queen fritters made doubly perilous
by slippery glaciers of rum sauce, into formidable jungles of breaded
veal chops threaded by sanguine and deadly streams of tomato gravy,
past sluggish mires of dreadful things en casserole, over hills of
corned-beef hash, across shaking quagmires of veal glace, plunging into
sloughs of slaw, until, haggard, weary, digestion shattered, complexion
gone, he reaches the safe haven of roast beef, medium. Once there,
he never again strays, although the pompadoured, white-aproned siren
sing-songs in his ear the praises of Irish stew, and pork with apple
sauce.

Emma McChesney was eating her solitary supper at the Berger house at
Three Rivers, Michigan. She had arrived at the Roast Beef haven many
years before. She knew the digestive perils of a small town hotel
dining-room as a guide on the snow-covered mountain knows each
treacherous pitfall and chasm. Ten years on the road had taught her to
recognize the deadly snare that lurks in the seemingly calm bosom of
minced chicken with cream sauce. Not for her the impenetrable mysteries
of a hamburger and onions. It had been a struggle, brief but terrible,
from which Emma McChesney had emerged triumphant, her complexion and
figure saved.