Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night. Lewis Grizzard

floor.

      For years I have stood foursquare against cleaning off my table at fast-food restaurants.

      For one thing, it makes me feel like I’m back at the grammar-school cafeteria.

      You walk in, get in line, and pick up your tray of food; then you carry your food to your table, eat it, and you’re expected to clean your mess.

      Every time I go through all that, I can hear Mrs. Bowers, my second-grade teacher, saying, “You can’t go out to the playground until you’ve eaten the rest of your English peas.”

      But there is a more important issue here. If fast-food restaurants can convince you to clean up after yourself—as is mostly the case—it means they don’t have to hire somebody to do it for you.

      Think of all the jobs that would be created if all of us customers said to fast-food restaurants, “You want the table cleaned up, then hire somebody to do it.”

      For instance, McDonald’s could put that silly clown to work as a busboy and pay him overtime.

      I’m not certain what has happened to service in this country, but there seems to be less of it than ever. Consider:

       The only way you can get food in most airports is to do the cafeteria-line bit and then pay the sullen cashier.

       If you have bags, try carrying them with one hand while juggling food and drink on a tray with the other.

      Since the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t provide statistics, there is no telling how many passengers are scalded in airport cafeterias each year by dropping their trays and getting hot coffee in their hair.

       You have to pump your own gasoline most times these days.

       There are no longer ushers in movie houses to show you to an empty seat.

       An ever-increasing number of grocery stores insist you unload your own buggy at the checkout line.

       What’s next after a haircut? Is the barber going to insist I sweep the floor?

      All this self-service nonsense began with the salad bar. Restaurants discovered people would actually get up and make their own salads.

      I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I want somebody to bring my salad to me, because when I go out to eat I prefer not lifting a finger.

      I also didn’t clean my table after eating at the fast-food restaurant the other day, either, and I have made a pact with myself never to do so again.

      As for the chili I spilled on the floor, that’s where it belonged in the first place.

      The One and Only Vidalia Onion

      Whenever I am confronted by atheists, I simply make the point that if there weren’t a God and He (or She) didn’t love us, there wouldn’t be such a thing as the beloved Vidalia onion.

      Think about it: Vidalia onions, which are sweet and mild, grow only in a small part of southeast Georgia.

      Some have tried to duplicate the Vidalia in other parts of the country, but to no avail.

      God, I am convinced, was traveling through what was to become southeast Georgia during the six days of creation and said, “Let there be a sweet, mild onion, and let it grow here and here only.”

      It was just another of the many blessings God gave us, such as spring, cool breezes, the beach, and frequent-flyer points.

      I must admit, however, that I have had a problem with Vidalia onions over the years. I usually buy them in great quantities.

      I am afraid if I don’t, the Arabs will get control of Vidalias and send the price up so far I can’t buy them anymore.

      My problem is that I can’t eat my onions fast enough, and some of my supply turn funny colors and begin to smell.

      Because I absolutely abhor throwing out spoiled Vidalia onions, I set about to find a way to keep them fresh for long periods of time.

      Finally, I have the answer.

      Friends invited me to dinner recently, and delicious baked Vidalia onions were served.

      During the meal, I asked, “Do you have a problem keeping your Vidalias fresh?”

      “Of course not,” the husband answered. “I’ve got fifty pounds of them stored right now. I’ll be eating Vidalia onions all winter. The best way to keep Vidalias,” he went on, “is to put them in panty hose.”

      “Panty hose?”

      “Yes,” the wife explained. “You take a pair of panty hose and cut off the top part.

      “Then you put an onion all the way to the place where your foot goes. Then you tie a knot just above that onion and put in another on top of it. When the panty hose are full of onions, you hang them up somewhere and they stay absolutely fresh.

      “What you are doing is keeping the onions from touching one another, which is one reason they go bad if you leave them stored in, say, a sack.”

      “I hope you don’t mind if I tell the rest of the nation about this,” I said to my friends.

      “Fine, but I don’t believe you should mention us by name,” said the husband while his wife was not in the room.

      “It could be a little embarrassing if you wrote that my wife could get fifty pounds of Vidalia onions in a pair of her panty hose.”

      I put my hand on what was left of my baked Vidalia and swore I would be discreet.

      Knowing Where to Draw the Line on Carp

      As far as I know, my late grandfather never read The New York Times. He read the Bible, The Market Bulletin, and a Sears Roebuck catalog, but I just can’t picture him dealing with the likes of R. W. Apple, Jr., William Safire, and Flora Lewis.

      I think he would have been astounded if he had ever picked up a Times, as I did the other day, and read a front-page story about how scientists have been fooling around with his most unfavorite fish, the carp.

      The Times story, displayed at the bottom left of page one opposite a George Bush campaign yawner, explained how scientists have taken a growth gene out of trout and have implanted it in carp, thus making it possible to grow bigger carp.

      “Who in the devil,” my grandfather would have said, peering over the top of the Times, “would want a bigger carp?”

      My grandfather was a kind and gentle man, but there were a few things he hated.

      Among these were opera singers on The Ed Sullivan Show, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and carp.

      “Sorriest fish there’s ever been, the carp,” my grandfather would say. “It’s too hard to clean and too bony to eat.”

      On one of our fishing trips to Sibley’s Pond, something grabbed my hook and down went my cork.

      I ran backward with my cane pole in order to pull my fish out of the water. But when I landed my catch on the bank, my grandfather took one look at it and growled, “All you got is a carp. Throw it back.”

      With that background, then, it should come as no surprise that when I read the Times story I, too, reacted, “Who in the devil would want a bigger carp?”

      I talked to several fishing experts to find out. One, Charles Salter, fishing writer of The Journal/Constitution in Atlanta, told me Orientals treat carp as a delicacy.

      He even said that during the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson sent fish experts to that country to help natives produce more carp.

      Mr. Salter did, however, agree there has been some hostility toward the carp in this country and he also said the carp was difficult to clean. (“You have to bleed ‘em,” he said. Ugh.)

      I