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30 JULY 8, 2004
BY CHEF BOY ARI
The Square Meal
Kesey and the exploration of essential chaos.
T
he 100-year anniversary of the
action in James Joyce’s Ulysses
has been much celebrated in print
lately, and justly so. But we’re also at the
anniversary of another epic journey that’s
worthy of note. Forty years ago, Ken Kesey
and his tribe of Merry Pranksters were on
the road from San Francisco to New York,
surfing the bow wave of a cultural revolu-
tion looming just below the horizon, in
waters deceptively placid on the surface.
The Great Depression was long gone, put to
rest by the victory of World War II.
Technology and wealth had made America
great, and this was only the beginning. TV
dinners foretold microwaves, while a
nation of cars gathered like cattle at drive-
in troughs, filling up on burgers and milk-
shakes and blazing a trail for the fast-food
herd to follow. Meanwhile, America’s dark
underbelly continued to fester; segregation,
DDT, witch hunts, the taboos of sex. It was
an uptight time, with plenty of uptight peo-
ple determined to keep it that way.
The Merry Pranksters, meanwhile, were
overflowing with spontaneous, absurd
energy. Kesey had just published One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which used insane
asylum interiors as allegory for the cult of
control suffocating America. Cuckoo’s Nest
seemed to promise that such oppressive
squareness would not — could not — con-
tain humanity’s essential chaos in a world
that is, after all, round.
The struggle between the square and the
circle is about more than shape. It’s about
humanity’s never ending quest to gain a
reliable foothold in an environment that is
in constant flux. Think of the circle, with its
forgiving, flowing curve, as a river. Think
of the square as the cup we dip into the river
to get a drink. We need them both, the flow
and control. To truly embrace the flow
would mean being perfectly OK with flow-
ing over a waterfall. On the other hand, to
give yourself completely to the square
would mean becoming a total nerd, or an
uptight nurse like in Cuckoo’s Nest.
Even Pranksters, it turns out, can be
square. As Tom Wolfe reports in The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, there were two
Pranksters on the bus, Generally Famished
and Dis-mount, who “took to going off
whenever they could for a square meal.
Square on every level … in one of those
square American Steak houses … square
steak, square French fries, boiled bland
peas and carrots and A-1 steak sauce.”
The other Pranksters scoffed at this,
maintaining their diet of hamburgers from
roadside joints along the highways that
Eisenhower built. In hindsight, hamburgers
seem pretty square, too. Should we be dis-
appointed? If there were an organic hippy-
food option at every stop, would the
Pranksters have gone there instead?
Probably not, my gut tells me. “Never
trust a Prankster,” went the mantra. And
while the Pranksters were full of surprises,
one thing that never wavered was their love
for America, despite so much about it that
was ungroovy. In many ways, the open road
and the hamburger epitomized American
freedom, and in their loyalty to the road
burger, the Pranksters confirmed their deep
patriotism.
Hoping to confirm my faith in abstract
symbolism, I journeyed to the kitchen to
prepare a burger that isn’t square. I minced
garlic and parsley and mixed them into a
paste, which I massaged, with bread-
crumbs, into ground meat. I patted the meat
into a big flat circle and fried it in bacon
grease. In another pan, I made a sauce of
mushrooms, garlic, sherry, red wine and
butter.
. . .while the
Pranksters were full of
surprises, one thing that
never wavered was their
love for America,
despite so much about it
that was ungroovy.
As the outside of the burger got crispy, it
started smelling really good. But I realized
that the inside of this round patty would
never taste as good as the surface. The sur-
face, yes! Surface area is the key! More sur-
face area means more tasty crispiness to
soak up the tangy, earthy, mushroom sauce.
I may be a sucker for symbols, but I
couldn’t bear the thought of eating the
tepid, soft, parsley-infested interior of that
patty. This is how Dante must have felt in
the center of heaven, how Kesey must have
felt when they reached New York and
nobody seemed to care.
Pissed, I dug into the big round patty
with the blade of my spatula, cutting it into
small pieces: oblong spheroids, trapezoids
and, yes, squares. When they were crispy
all around, I stirred them into the mush-
room sauce and then served the crispy
chunks on French bread slices with mayo.
Was it still a burger? Was it square? I don’t
know. And at this point, I don’t care. ew
Chef Boy Ari, also known as Ari LaVaux, is currently
living and cooking in Missoula, Mont.
The
Broadway
Bistro • Wine Merchants • Catering
Belgian Beer Tasting
An educational exploration of Belgian Beers
Thurs., July 15th • 6:30pm
RESERVATION REQUIRED • APPETIZERS SERVED • TICKETS $25
2 0 0 W. B R OA D W AY • E U G E N E , O R 9 7 4 0 1 • 6 8 5 - 0 7 9 0