Back in Time to Witness the Reinvention of the Chicken Tender
Memory and the strange comfort of Foosackly’s
Just Another Blog Post #02
(I wrote and released this in March of 2020)
In June of 2019, I went back to my hometown. It had been almost twenty years since I’d been in Mobile, Alabama.
Of course, it had changed. But in many ways, it was exactly the same. It almost felt as if time had stopped there and waited for me. I am the center of my universe, after all.
It is strange how cities or towns live on without you. We will all die eventually. All the people of our lives will die. Our pets die. Our technology dies. Our careers may die…
I have often wondered what “my life” would look like after I’m gone. But I know it will simply continue without me.
Some people will miss me, and others won’t even notice. Life goes on.
That’s kind of what it felt like in Mobile. Life went on in that town. But even though I don’t have any more family there, and I am not tethered to the city in any real way, it still felt like it had waited for me.
Old Dobbin Drive East
The second half of my childhood was headquartered in the Carriage Hills neighborhood. The family moved up economically in the wide middle-class bracket. We were almost in the upper-middle class!
The poet Steven Blythe and I visited my old neighborhood. My old home on Old Dobbin Drive East is a house that has a lot to say about me. But for the sake of the blog—I moved to this house in 8th grade, and when I was 25, I helped my father move out of it.
We parked in front of the house. It looked the same, but dark and empty. A neighbor next door, where the proctologist’s family used to live, was in his driveway.
“I used to live here,” I said.
“There!” the man said. He seemed excited to hear this.
“Yes, a long time ago.”
“It was abandoned,” he said. “My daughter bought this house 16 years ago, and that house was abandoned. Someone finally bought it two years ago, but they haven’t done anything with it.”
That’s weird. It’s like time stopped for me. Kind of…
Foosackly’s
A new fast-food chain has taken over Mobile, Alabama. Foosackly’s seemed to be everywhere.
What is this place?
What a weird name for a restaurant.
After seeing five locations in two days, I wrote down the name. Foosackly’s is a local Gulf Shores–area chain with over a dozen locations. They sell chicken tenders. According to their website, their mission is an honorable one:
“The vision is simple: provide the best chicken and house-made sauces in the world, deliver the quickest, friendliest, most accurate and attentive service, provide a positive, clean and organized work environment, and to do it all at an outstanding value. Our mission is to always look for ways to improve, to try and exceed the customers’ expectations, and to have fun in the process.”
When I lived in Mobile, my family went to Mrs. Winners for chicken—a franchise that has moved out of the state of Alabama. Perhaps pushed out by the mighty Foosackly’s while I was away.
Life goes on.