I'm pleased to have pulled the trigger tonight on another month of my "Facebook birthday project", with a donation (in honor of my 42 FB connections who publicized their birthday in the month of February) to the local Ronald McDonald house -- currently under construction as the world's largest, and next to the brand new Lurie Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago which will open this summer.
Somehow in my barely 40 years, I've yet to stay over in the hospital a night (as a patient) [which probably speaks more to my relatively risk-averse sedentary lifestyle than anything else] -- but I'm pretty sure that the House back home near the (Penn State) Hershey Med Center has had a Neidermyer or two stay there over the years. And, to be clear, McDonalds was a huge part of my youth, so this was an easy pick of a charity for me.
It was one of my first real jobs in high school, and I met a lot of quality people there -- including those that would help me when I struck out on my own and ran away from home and friends that helped shape me from "little Troy boy" to "older boy with some responsibilities" [I was still just 17 and 18 after all.] Looking back, the only times I've ever been to the ski slopes or white water rafting was with other McFolk -- and my best friends and I all met by working the grill and the drive through at the East Lebanon McDonalds.
I still have a McNugget buddy. I can remember eating a McDLT. I made the double quarter pounder with cheese before it was a menu item. I greeted most of the population of late eighties Lebanon and worked on my speaking voice by having many many shifts at the Drive-Thru. I distributed game pieces, made biscuits, ran the clam grill, double-folded take out bags, changed the fry grease, built salads in the back, cleaned the ice cream machine, ate "just-expired" food at the end of the night as we closed (and blasted music through the empty dining room).
And I worked there in 1989 when they ill-advisedly tried to have this commercial's "McDonalds Menu song" catch on:
MCDLT FEATURED RIGHT UP FRONT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXTAXjMHvg
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