story writting on me and my adventurous.
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A slate-grey sky hung heavy over the President James K. Polk Memorial rest area on Interstate 64 in southern Indiana. At the fueling station, eighteen wheelers lined up under bright green lights for diesel and windshield wiper fluid from an army of apathetic attendants. A mother carrying a styrofoam coffee cup emerged from the Kwik Mart, pulling the collar of her neon pink and light purple ski jacket tight around her neck with her free hand and hurrying her two children across the broad expanse of cracked tarmac. A grove of oak trees, damp brown and bare of leaves for months now, peaked above the domed roof of the food court. At the far end of the parking lot, a mountain of exhaust-stained snow towered precariously over a red and yellow dumpster belonging to Solid Waste Disposition Incorporated, Akron, OH. A cacophony of colors and commotion.
Frank eased his Kia into a parking spot and surveyed the scene. He was not like the rest of them, hustling to-and-fro on their way to somewhere else, to grandma’s house for Christmas, perhaps, or home after a work trip in Louisville or Wheeling or Pittsburgh. No. For Frank J. Marone, the President James K. Polk Memorial rest area was the destination.
In front of him, a fifty-foot steel pole held aloft the black and red cowboy hat signage of the Arby’s Corporation, the curved lines of the double-peaked crown and round brim glowed a warm red against the cold of the December day.
He picked up his phone, smiled, stuck his thumb up, and snapped a selfie. Below the image, he typed, “It’s been twelve years since I started this journey. At last, I come face to face with my white whale (or is it a cod?).” He sent it off to his forty-eight thousand-plus followers and then scrolled through his timeline. Back to the beginning, to 2009, the Roy Rogers outside of Toms River that still served the Cordon Bleu Gold, discontinued nationally in 2005. That one had been pretty easy. Just a quick jaunt down the Garden State Parkway. There and back in a short afternoon. Number nine on the list: the McSalmon Fritters, which he'd found at a barely functioning McDonalds outside of Homer, Alaska. That one had required more doing, an online fundraiser and a series of puddle jumpers.
It had started as a lark, the quest for obscure and discontinued fast food items. Something to do. To pass the time. Shits and giggles. After he'd crossed number five or six off the list of twenty-five sandwiches and tenders and salad shakers, though, the quest had taken over his life, become his identity.
Frank set the phone back down on the passenger seat and watched it buzz and ding with congratulatory missives. In front of the Arby’s, a man shuffled back and forth and spoke to himself angrily, a burned-to-the-filter cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Frank was there to meet a man about a sandwich. Gordon Warmbacher, franchisee of sixteen Arby’s restaurants across the upper Midwest and Great Plains, about the legendary Mahalo King Cod Filet, to be precise. The Mahalo King was the last on his list that included the KFC Turkey Tender, the Burger King Ostrich Deluxe, and Taco Bell’s Cool Ranch Gator Taco, served exclusively in Louisiana and the Florida Panhandle.