A Burger Bucket Christmas

One year my husband was in an extended training in the south. It happened to extend through the month of December, and I figured we should make the most of it. I flew out there, and we went to St. Augustine, Florida for Christmas.

For those of you who don’t know, St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565, and it has the distinction of being the oldest American city… founded by white people. Well, “continuously inhabited” city, according to Wikipedia. And in “the continental US”. When you start digging into it, you learn there are a lot of ways to claim being the “oldest” at something.

But the city is cool! Particularly to someone who grew up in a house that was just a mirror image of the rest of the houses in the neighborhood. I could feel the history.

We went to the somewhat tourist trap of a park where Ponce de Leon allegedly discovered the fountain of youth. They let us try the water. A nice way to say it is that it tasted like sulfur. A kid next to us exclaimed it tasted like farts. Both descriptors are accurate.

We went on an evening boat cruise that let us see the holiday lights of the town from the water. And then on the evening of Christmas, we set out on foot into the historic downtown of St. Augustine to find Christmas dinner.

At first our journey was romantic. We held hands against the nighttime humidity, our footfalls echoing on the ancient (for the Euro-established cities in the continental U.S.) cobblestones. The yellow bulbs of the shops and restaurants twinkled in the inky darkness. Christmas lights lit up conifer inspired decor. Carriages pulled by elegant horses decorated with tinkling bells sang from the winding streets.

Then we realized there were a lot of people out. Like, hundreds and hundreds of people. And they were really well dressed. Like, to the nines. And they all spoke Spanish. And we went from feeling the history in our bones to being sorta slovenly-looking white people who were rapidly becoming hungry.

“What do you want to eat?” I asked my husband.

“Let’s just look at the menus as we go by places.”

So we stopped at the first place. A line went out the door.

“I’m not waiting in that,” my husband said.

We went to the next restaurant. The line was even longer. Then the next one. The line left the building and wrapped around the corner.

It took us longer than it should have to realize, we were screwed. We walked up and down the cobblestone streets, stopping at every restaurant, regardless of what they served or their price point. Every restaurant was jammed with extremely fashionable people.

Hours later, we ended up at the far end of the historic downtown. We had failed to find anything to eat, and the waitlists for getting into places exceeded their operating hours. We were hungry, tired, and did I mention, hungry.

We ended up in a grassy area with stone picnic tables. It was dark and the forms of sleeping homeless people occasionally shifted from the bushes or under the tables. I was over it, and then we saw it.

The Burger Bucket.

Lit up like a beacon of hope against the ever expanding blackness of the empty night. Through the ceiling high glass windows we could see people shoveling burgers and fries into their mouths. Like all of the places we’d tried to eat, it was packed, but it looked so inviting. Like an oasis in the desert. My husband gave me a weary head nod and we plodded to it.

We entered the brightly lit shadow of the Burger Bucket, and just stepping into the neon lights filled me with hope. I got in line behind the other calorie-deficient people, and thought, maybe, just maybe, we’d all make it.

My husband stood beside me, studying the signs tapped to the wall.

“Franchising available,” he said. “We could start our own Burger Bucket.”

I was too tired to comment on this, and he started pecking at his phone. I made it to what I supposed passed as a hostess stand where an overweight, middle-aged man dripping sweat told me it would be two hours to get a seat. Out of options, I put in our name.

My husband had disappeared, and I left the extremely loud restaurant to find him outside.

“It’s two hours. I put in our name.”

He nodded and we leaned against the wall. About twenty minutes later, he glanced at his phone and went inside. He came out with a greasy paper bag.

I stared. Had he procured food?

“I don’t want a franchise, but I took them up on their mobile ordering,” he said, tipping his head at the sign below the one advertising the franchising options. Sure enough, a handwritten paper proclaimed they now had mobile ordering.

We walked back to one of the stone tables that wasn’t being slept under and ripped open the bag. The burgers weren’t great, and I was honestly so hungry, I didn’t want to eat, but I did consume enough calories that I’d be able to walk back across the historic downtown and to our hotel.

“You should eat more,” my husband said.

But I was over it. We gave the rest of our fries to a homeless guy and made our way back toward our hotel. The throngs of women in white pants and fur lined coats, men with designer suits, little kids in brand new dresses had not lessened. In fact, there seemed to be more people out now than there had been when we’d first started our misguided attempt at getting dinner.

“Who are all these people?” I asked, watching a picture perfect family climb into a horse drawn carriage. “And why do they all look like they should be in a magazine full of designer clothes?”

“I have no idea,” my husband said. “But I think it’s us who are out of place.”

We made it back to our hotel. The woman at the front desk gave us brandy and plum cake. I wondered if she knew what was happening in the historic downtown. How there was no way to eat, and most people’s footwear cost more than my entire outfit.

“What a magical time of year,” my husband said, scooping up a second piece of cake. “A Burger Bucket Christmas with a nightcap of brandy. A meal to remember.”

And he wasn’t wrong. It’s hard to forget the Burger Bucket.