Several weeks after CS and I met, Hurricane Georges threatened the city. I decided to ride it out with my grandparents at their house. Through their 80 years of living in the city, they had never evacuated, not even for Audrey or the infamous Camille, and their home was never damaged in any storm. Further, they had a generator! If electricity was lost, we’d be back in business in no time.

Within twenty minutes of my arrival, lightening lit up the den and seconds later a loud clap of thunder rang throughout the house. The television and lights blinked off. The wind was not blowing strong, and the rain was mild. I waited for the lights to come back on; they didn’t. My grandfather went to investigate. He came in moments later and reported that a transformer had been hit by lightening and from their house into the next block to the south, the electricity was out and would be out for some time. His neighbors to the north did not lose electricity. Time continued to pass and the lights were not restored. I began to get anxious about getting the generator started up, but I didn’t want to be pushy. I had the fullest faith in my grandfather and felt I was in very capable hands.

My grandfather went outside to talk again with his next door neighbor. After some time, my grandfather returned with an extension cord. “What’s going on?” I finally asked. My grandfather answered, “Bill is letting me run electricity from his house so I can plug in the refrigerator and TV inside and the deep freeze in the garage.” “But what about the generator?” I questioned further. His shrug of the shoulders is all of an answer I got. I was too respectful to question him further even though I had concerns about running an extension cord across a yard during a hurricane.

The evening dragged on. With the windows boarded up and the lights out, the TV was the only source of light in the house. Thus, it felt later in the evening than it actually was. The hurricane made its northern turn sooner than predicted and took aim at Florida; New Orleans was to be spared. Thus, the night’s weather was unremarkable. Nevertheless, my grandfather kept the television tuned to the weather, which showed footage of an egret caught in electrical wires, its dead body flapping in the wind. As there was nothing to report in the way of actual hurricane damage in the area, this footage was shown over and over. By 9pm, I’d had all of that sad egret I could take. I said my goodnights and went to bed.

I awoke the next morning and went into the kitchen to greet my grandparents. We still did not have electricity (other than the fridge and the TV), and the TV was back on (and the poor egret was still flapping in the wind); the hurricane had passed. Both Jefferson and Orleans Parishes had installed curfews the evening before, and I didn’t know whether they had been lifted yet. Then I noticed my grandfather eating a hamburger from McDonald’s. I was elated: the curfew must have lifted for him to have been to McDonald’s. He noticed that I was looking at his burger and he said to me, “I’d offer you one, but we only had two left, and we finished them.” I didn’t understand why he’d go to McDonald’s and not get a burger for me. So he explained.

Every Wednesday, McDonald’s sold its hamburgers for 39¢. McDonald’s would only sell a dozen to any one customer, and you could not get them through the Drive-Thru. Thus, once a week, my grandfather went into McDonald’s and ordered his dozen hamburgers. He and Sunshine would eat one each for lunch on Wednesday and freeze the other ten and eat them throughout the week. The burger he was munching one was the last of his frozen stash. Again with this freezer of his! As if the news of this weekly ritual wasn’t odd enough (especially first thing in the morning), my grandfather then asked me if I knew the difference between a McDonald’s hamburger and a McDonald’s cheeseburger. To me, the obvious answer appeared to be CHEESE, but, again, I didn’t want to be disrespectful and so instead I said that I did not know. He proceeded to tell me of his latest visit to McDonald’s.

My grandfather went into the restaurant and ordered his dozen as usual. As he was waiting for them, a customer came to the counter and complained, “I ordered a cheeseburger, but there is no cheese on this burger.” The cashier inspected the burger, apologized, and gave her a fresh cheeseburger. My grandfather now had ten of his twelve hamburgers. Moments later, the customer returned to the counter and made the same complaint. This time, the cashier selected another cheeseburger from the line, discovered that it too had no cheese on it and tossed it in the trash. (At this point in his tale, I was afraid my grandfather was going to tell me he retrieved the maligned burger from the trash. I was relieved when I realized that was not where this story was going.) The clerk inspected another cheeseburger, confirmed it had cheese on it and gave it to the woman. The cashier checked the remaining cheeseburgers, turned to my grandfather and said, “These cheeseburgers do not have cheese on them. Would you like two of them as your last two hamburgers?” To my grandfather, this sounded like a bargain and he greedily said yes.

When my grandfather returned home he couldn’t wait to discover exactly what a deal he had gotten by getting those two cheeseburgers for 39¢. Alas! He was to be disappointed. “Cheese,” he told me. “Cheese and a yellow wrapper instead of a white one,” he insisted, were the only differences between a McDonald’s hamburger and a McDonald’s cheeseburger. I snickered and asked him why he had expected the difference to be more than just cheese–I mean, the name would imply that the only difference would be cheese! “Because,” he explained, “the cheeseburger costs twenty cents more than the hamburger. Twenty cents for a piece of cheese and a yellow wrapper? For twenty cents, I can come home and put my own cheese on a burger!” It was my turn to shrug my shoulders; I had nothing in response to say.

I hightailed it out of their home as soon as the curfew lifted. It was the first and last hurricane in which I’d evacuate to my grandparents.