When I told my Texan friends and family that I was moving to New Jersey for graduate school, they warned me about the “liberal North.” Later, my graduate school peers would snarl with the same venom about the “racist South.” Both sets had been convinced that America could be neatly divided down the Mason-Dixon line into godless heathens and religious hypocrites.
I was born in a Texas college town but spent my formative years moving coast to coast, before my family ended up returning to a different part of Texas, where I lived the longest, for a full eight years. Due to my travels, I felt I had long outgrown any belief in stereotypes, even if I did proudly call myself a Texan, the only proof of an accent being my inability to differentiate between “pen” and “pin.”
Yet I still found myself woefully unprepared for the culture shock I experienced in the northeast corner of America: I had no idea that there would be no good burger places in New Jersey. Correction: I could not find a single fast food burger place in New Jersey that compared with San Antonio’s infamous 24-hour chain, Whataburger. For the uninitiated, Whataburger is to the South what In-N-Out is to California.
Of course, I had tried out the hipster burgers of the northeast––grass-fed, with toppings fresh from the field, slathered in tangy artisanal cheeses and dips. I’d also eaten New Jersey’s sports-bar burger, an afterthought of the corner pizza parlor that had tucked a burger menu beneath its prized offerings of cheesesteak and hot wings.
To me, neither could top Whataburger’s thin, juicy patties as wide as my face and available in the time it takes to round a drive-thru. Add to that Whataburger’s sweet tea, poured into cups large enough to drown myself in and brimming with enough sugar to crystalize my arteries. Then there’s those honeybutter chicken biscuits, the spicy ketchup, the burning hot fries, and the thick vanilla milkshakes––all of it served up without a whiff of pretension.
The Northeast’s sorry attempts to replicate my prized Texan artifact only made my homesickness worse. I missed the comfort of spotting Whataburger’s orange and white arches from the highway, of knowing that no matter how bad my day was, how long the flight, how badly I bungled that exam, that burger and that sweet tea will solve any crime. New Jersey may be smothered in pizza, cheesesteak, and bagels, but it all comes at the expense of burger joints, barbecue, and Tex-Mex. Not an even trade.
~
As a graduate student, I taught Composition 101 to incoming freshmen, and I would spend an hour each semester teaching tone and voice, by way of the poet Amir Safi, an Iranian-American slam poet from Houston, Texas. As a Muslim who grew up in conservative Texas, his work encompasses the racial and religious tension a reader might expect, such as in his poem “Brown Boy, White House.” But for all the importance of his activism, the poem I love and return to most is “An Ode to Whataburger”––because Whataburger means more than just burgers.
Whenever I’d assign Safi’s performance of “Whataburger” to my students, I’d first ask them to watch it for homework (it’s a 3-minute watch on Youtube), and then we’d rewatch and discuss it in class. The screening unfolded nearly the same way every time:
I dim the classroom lights; the projector screen lights up the room with the words, “Texas Grand Slam Poetry Festival.” Safi is spotlighted against a black background in the center of a stage, and as I press play. A whoop resounds from Safi’s audience before he’s even spoken the first line.
Safi begins in a tender voice: he says, “Oh Whataburger,” and the audience laughs. I grin to myself, despite the tens of times I’ve watched the performance.
He continues seriously and sincerely: “Texas born titan. A-frame shelter. Pilgrimage for the South. Church of meat grease and longer waits.”
I cut in: “Notice the religious imagery. Notice how he is comparing a fast-food chain to a church.” A repeated motif, I note, is the way the poet elevates a restaurant to sacredness. My students frown. A few of the studious ones nod. The first time I teach this lesson, I am surprised by their lack of interest. With subsequent lessons, I am less surprised, but I am always a little disappointed.
“Oh Whataburger, you would be a sweet, sweet lover,” Safi croons, “but that’s for another poem.” I snicker, and my freshmen stare. Safi says, “In high school, you were our place to hang that didn’t involve the words ‘pasture party.’ In college, you were our live 2 AM entertainment.”
Then comes the line that makes his audience howl for five solid seconds: Safi stares down his audience and says, “You’re the only place I’ve ever felt safe sitting next to a cop.”
This line is the reason I’d teach this poem, year after year, and I gesture, wide-eyed and semi-frantic, hoping my students will catch on. I say, “Did you see how he took a funny poem and made it serious? Do you see how he tied in the current political climate and fears about cops and police brutality and systemic racism into a poem about hamburgers?!”
Where I had seen glazed and confused expressions, I finally see obliging nods, maybe even hear a, “Wow, miss,” though my students never quite match my passion.
Safi concludes: “…the drive-thru lady told me, ‘I hope you like this. I put my heart into it.’” He thumps his chest. “I know you did,” he says, “I know.” Then the audience roars, Safi bows, and the video fades out.
I flick the lights back on; my students squint at the sudden brightness. The lesson continues with a flurry of analysis followed by admonitions to do next week’s reading, to start the first draft of an essay. My students leave, some complaining that talking about hamburgers all class has made them hungry. I wonder if they’ve missed the point.
~
In case it isn’t clear, I do not think these are bad students. A few weeks later in my syllabus, I will lead these very same students in a roaring debate. We will discuss whether superheroes should be registered with the government, as in the Marvel movies, or not. In two different classes, when I make the connection between personal freedoms (the right to shoot lasers from my eyes) and community freedoms (the right to know if my neighbor is able to shoot me with his laser eyes), a student will cry out, “Oh my god! Am I a conservative?”
But when it comes to Whataburger and the things that connect me to my home, my students don’t seem to get it.
Later, I will wonder how I could have explained it better to them, wondering if there might have been another way to approach the poem to help them understand. If I were to teach the same lesson today, I would borrow a phrase from another piece of writing: “Sometimes, when you’re drowning, the stick that saves you looks a little funny.” In other words, the things you hold sacred sometimes seem a little bit silly to other people.
~
I still miss Texas. I miss the flat lands of the Panhandle, the weirdness of Austin, and the cowboy culture that pervades everything. I miss the college rivalries, my grandfather’s farm and the small towns that time seems to have forgotten. I am and will always be Texan, even if I never claim residency in my home state again.
I am pragmatic. I have lived in too many places not to know that, if I ever moved back to Texas, I would no longer miss Whataburger, but would instead long for Wawa, the Ben Franklin bridge, overfilled cheesesteaks and the best bagels in the nation.
The problem with belonging to many places is that you can only inhabit one at a time. Going back to Texas would only result in a different form of homesickness.
I will enjoy the bagels and the cheesesteaks, and the ability to find a Wawa with my eyes shut for as long as I live here, in New Jersey. But some days, when I hear a familiar accent, or my local burger joint is closed, or when I’m trying to explain the difference between Tex-Mex and Mexican, I just need a gallon of sweet tea to wash away the homesickness and a juicy cheeseburger that will soothe my hungry heart pangs. So, here’s to Whataburger and the icons that remind us of home.
