Ernie's Texas Lunch, The Real Deal

As I previously mentioned, my mother's family has been frequenting Ernie's Texas Lunch since before I was born. Back in the day I usually had a cheeseburger and soup. But some time between when Ernie's was a more regular part of my yearly life and, well, now? I developed a greater appreciation for a hotdog. The components of Ernie's Texas dog with that of the Chambersburg "Historic Texas Lunch" are similar: a dog, mustard, chili and chopped white onions. Where Ernie's pulls ahead, as my mother mentioned and I confirmed, is in the dog and bread department. Ernie's uses a more serious roll, a little heftier and of better quality. The same can be said for their dog. My mother's main complaint about Chambersburg's version was that it was just a regular hot dog...whereas Ernie's dogs are plumper, more flavorful and actually grilled. The grilling is key. Makes it better all around. Though I agree, Ernie's onions are kind of out of control. And, though I've come around to the whole hotdog world...I'm still not sure if I really need chili on my hotdog. Just not sure, folks, pretty unclear about the whole darn thing.
Ernie's does win though.

Oh and I've read a few books. You'll hear about them later, don't you worry.

Hot Dog and California Cheeseburger c/o Ernie's Texas Lunch

After our battlefield times, we met back up with my father and we all went to Ernie's Texas Lunch. This is another tradition that hearkens back to the mists of time; a trip to Ernie's without a hot dog would be like a trip to New York City without either a bagel or a late night deli sandwich. Only that analogy doesn't quite capture the family ties to Ernie's. Not literal ties as much as - well figurative would kind of work but that's not what I'm trying to say. I've gone to Ernie's off and on for my whole life. Probably never more than two or three times in a year. But almost every year. I've seen the place change. I've gone from eating hot dogs to not eating hot dogs to eating hot dogs again. I've seen the staff grow old and disappear. It's just one of those places. They wouldn't recognize me, but the establishment has long been a part of my life.

Whatever. All to say that I decided that I'd have a dog with everything. A. was willing to split a 'California' cheeseburger, which seems to mean simply that it comes with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.
Every time I come here I feel like I should order the dog with everything because that's how it's done; that's what makes it a "Texas" dog. But the onions are always so plentiful that it becomes hard to locate the dog...and the fact of the matter is that I'm not actually a giant fan of chili. So. Mark my words. Next time I'm at Ernie's I'm going to order a dog with mustard. Full stop. Even with the challenges of the toppings, it was a good dog. The skin is nice and crispy and the dog juicy and delicious.
I did a little negotiating with my hot dog so it better fit into my mouth and that its onion to chili to dog ratio was more to my liking and all was successful and right.
The burger was ok. Nothing really to write home about, but cheap and not bad in any way. When I was a kid I really liked their beef vegetable soup. I may have to try it the next time I'm in town.

Donut 2 and Lunch at Ernie's Texas Lunch

Originally it seemed like my fam (uncle, aunt, cousin, cousin's bf and his two kids) and I would arrive at roughly the same time. But with the wrench of no fried chicken, I ended up embarking on my drive to Gettysburg a little earlier than initially expected. I opted for not taking 76 for the majority, which meant smaller roads, more stoplights, the occasional ugliness of strip mall mentality and glorious sunny fields, country roads and red buds blooming. Once in Gettysburg I checked into General Lee's Headquarters (formerly Larson's). I had a room that faced the main road on one side, and the edge of a battlefield on the other...two windows! I decided that while I waited for the rest of the crew I'd tried out the S'mores donut while enjoying the sunlight. Seriously it was easily 70 degrees and marvelous. The donut wasn't that bad either, though I liked the simplicity of the hot sugar donut a bit more.
Once the Ohio contingent arrived we made our way to Ernie's Texas Lunch. This spot has been a favorite of my family since the beginnings of time. We sat at the big back table and those of us over the age of 21 enjoyed ourselves a lager each.
French fries for the table. Extremely hot, extremely crispy but with a nice inside, well salted. No complaints. Ernie's knows what it's doing when it comes to French fries.
My past experiences with having the Texas-style dog with everything have always left me feeling like I really don't need the chili or quite the pile of onions that Ernie's feels is the best. And this time I remembered that outlook and asked for two dogs with cheese, mustard and a little bit of onion. They were big and juicy. I ended up eating the meat more than the buns.
Seriously a beautiful day.

Lunch c/o Ernie's Texas Lunch and Trip to Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Emporium

Now I usually wouldn't rush and do so many posts back to back to back, but the truth of the matter is I'm about to embark on a vacation, and I know that I'm going to go overboard with photographic evidence of it, so I'm hoping to prevent total backlog that would lead to my blogging about the vacation three months after it happened. There is some wisdom in this approach, though I also have a 5 AM cab to take, so it may be a mixed outcome for me. In any case. The next morning we all did our own thing for breakfast (I went and tried a new place on the square, but the bagel I had there was so forgettable that I'm not even bothering). I would also generally photoshop these a little for color correction, but again I feel like it's better to power through this trip at this point (it was three weeks ago I think). Ernie's is closed on Sundays, and Monday was going to be a holiday, so in order to get enough Ernie's time in, we returned for lunch on Saturday. We also met up with our cousins F. and N., who have always been very nice folks. I don't know them as well as my mother or my uncle do, but they've never been anything but friendly. It's strange because everyone's getting older, and it's just weird to see. It's weird to see the fact that I have white hairs, and that I'm not 21 and K.'s not 24/5, and that our parents and elders aren't pushing 60 as much as past 70. It's weird. In any case. It was a bit more busy on a Saturday afternoon. The big table in the back and quite a few booths were taken up with Gettysburg College kids who had the look of recuperating from long previous nights. The place has been renovated since I was a kid; brighter red colors and whiter walls, but the basic layout hasn't changed a whit. I asked everyone if they remembered the older woman who used to sit at the last stool in the back, who I swear always seemed a bit in her cups. No one did. This either means I was a very observant kid (possible) or I made it up (also possible).

I thought I'd try something new. Ernie's does what it does and it's not too crazy about new things, so the variety of the menu is pretty limited. I went with a fried chicken sandwich. A step above McDonalds fare, but generally speaking if you go to Ernies, stick with the hot dogs and fries.

A., K.'s bf, ordered fries with gravy. We took up three booths between us all. I ended up sitting with A. the bf, M. the cousin and K. the younger cousin. The kids, of course, rotated a bit. I think A. the kid also spent some time with us as well. Once the food was pretty much eaten, but F. and N. and my uncle were still gabbing, I thought that K. the kid might be less restless if I played a doodle game I remember playing with my mother on plane rides. Basically she'd start a drawing of a face or an animal and then I got to finish it up. I'll need to find the Instagram (@carikuber) photo I took of some of the interesting and creative choices K. made. He seemed to think I always had an idea of what I thought it would look like finished (I didn't) but one particularly inspired image was of a 'three bottomed ghost' as in he had three derriers. I got a kick out of that.

I had gotten pretty excited about the possibility of taking at least some of the kids to the Land of Little Horses. Basically I have all these memories of things I enjoyed, or things that stayed with me in a non-traumatic way, that I'd like to share with family children. Perhaps one day I'll have kids of my own, but that is by no means a certainty, so the opportunity to potentially be the curator of their Gettysburg memories, even just a little bit, was appealing. Plus, whatever, I wanted to see miniature horses and buy a handful of feed for 50 cents and give it to them. I mentioned this desire to the kids' respective parents, and they thought that at least the older kids might dig it. And so that had been a tentative plan...especially because most of the adults wanted to go see the Gettsyburg College basketball game, which truthfully I wasn't as keen on doing. But alas. The horse place doesn't open until it's warmer and my back up non-basketball activity was an Elephant Museum/Candy Emporium and though I may not have kids of my own, I know that bringing kids to a place with crap tons of candy is, like, a totally bad idea and would only lead to sorrow for everyone involved. So, after lunch, we went our separate ways yet again. You know, I'm beginning to think we didn't walk to Ernie's on Friday, that it was Saturday that we walked. In any case, I did make the slight drive out of town west towards Chambersburg, to check out Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum. I only even knew the place existed because of our 2008 summer reunion, during which my father had quite the heart health scare and ended up in the Chambersburg hospital. I drove back and forth between the two towns a few times, and passed the museum each and was certainly curious. It's definitely something. A strange roadside attraction with a certain history and illusion of grandeur that I'm not sure is entirely unwarranted, but isn't quite warranted either. It seems that this collection of elephant knick knacks used to be quite a bit larger, but a few years back there was a terrible fire and a good chunk of the collection was destroyed. When you first walk in, it's a good sized room full of candy, but if you snake your way past the fill your own pixie stick dispenser you'll get to a long and narrow hallway lined with plexiglassed shelves just loaded up with elephants of all kinds. Some look like beautiful little trinkets, other cracker jack box toys from any number of decades. It's sensory overload in a way. So much is crammed on each shelf it's hard to really see any of it.

In addition to the many, many shelves of candy, they also have a fudge case of house-made fudge. You can get 8 different kinds for $13, which I did....but then forgot to document because sometimes I am an idiot.

Outside they also had a strange amalgamation of statues around the main building. It's right off the road so it's one part magical and one part just weird...hard to get lost in the magic when cars are racing by. It had snowed just a little over night, and while in Gettysburg there wasn't much of a trace left by mid-afternoon, the drive west included some rather beautiful vistas of snow covered hills and valleys. Adams County, PA is a kind of weird area, the little I know of it, but not without its charms and beauty...and very strange BYO strip joints (but we don't need to get into that).

Obviously.

Imagine my face there.

Elephant looking over a fish pond. I wondered how the fish didn't freeze.

And on the way west I saw this strange thing and decided on the way back it was worth pulling over on the side of the road to document because....what the hell?

And there you have it.

Taco Dog c/o Ernie's Texas Lunch

On Friday my cousin K. texted me a bunch of times in an effort to convince me to drive to Gettysburg and hang out with her and my aunt and uncle. They live in Ohio, but had decided that a trip to Gettysburg and a Gettysburg football game were what they wanted for a weekend getaway. The last time I saw K. was in April, and I don't think I had seen my aunt and uncle since last July, so I was game for a drive. My first stop, once in town, was Ernie's Texas Lunch. My mother's family has been going to Ernie's for years and years and years and years. When I was a kid, I wasn't drawn to hot dogs and usually ended up getting a cheeseburger or soup...now, in my older, wiser, state I am all about the dogs.
I ordered a taco dog: a hot dog, a slice of American cheese, chili, hot sauce, lettuce and tomato. I had hoped for chopped tomato and expected spicier chili/sauce, neither of which ended up being met...that said, a nice lunch...and their french fries were nice and crisp and hot. An older woman at the booth behind me asked for her fries with gravy, which seemed like a good idea, but I was already committed to the non-gravy fries.


Tradition!

Lunch c/o Historic Texas Lunch

On Monday the extended family packed themselves up and headed on back to Ohio. The commute between where my mother and I were staying and Gettysburg was roughly 30 minutes though perhaps closer to 40 so we didn't see them off. On Monday my father was supposed to have a test to determine the next steps in his treatment. For this test he had to have the blood thinning medication he was being given curtailed/stopped altogether. The result of this was a far more sick looking dad. It's kind of amazing how much this medication seems to relieve my father's symptoms. Unfortunately the thinner had done too good a job and the test was first delayed from morning til afternoon and then, ultimately, until the next day. This was no fun since Dad looked like shit and was getting antsy. My mother and I, in between visiting spells, did manage to get some lunch at Historic Texas Lunch.
I had the Texas Lunch hotdog and a side of corn fritters. An absolute favorite of my mother's family starting, I believe, with my grandfather, is Ernie's Texas Lunch in Gettysburg....so we thought we'd do a little comparison...except that I haven't had a hotdog from Ernie's in years, so I had to rely on my mother's comparison skills. The outcome? Ernie's does it better but Historic Texas is a little lighter with the onions. Better how, you ask? Well we'll get to that a little later. I enjoyed the corn fritters immensely.

Lunching at Ernie's, Day 2

After breakfast I went back to my room and read Jane Austen until I got the text that said that the Ohio contingent was amassing and moving to Ernie's for lunch. I met up with them there and decided to revisit the beef tomato soup I so enjoyed as a kid. Sad truth is that this soup did not hold up well to my memory or current taste buds. There was a metallic taste to it, the beef was rather dry and though I like beef jerky I'm not really all that fond of it in soup form. I tried to get past it, but the majority of this soup went to waste.
I had a simpler dog too, just mustard. E. realized that he could order 'one with' and then scoop some of the excess chili and onions onto a second simpler dog. Clever. Thrifty. We met up with our Gettysburg cousins F. and N., and an epic round of 'let's show each other photos of our grand kids' began between E. and N. Sweet kids all of them (I only know E.'s).
After that we went to the Gettysburg Visitor Center. It continued to be an extremely gloomy day and the walk from the parking lot included a consistent drizzle and dampness I could have done without. The visitor center is huge and relatively new. We went the whole hog and had tickets for the introductory movie, cyclorama and admission to the exhibits. The movie, narrated by Morgan Freeman, traced the events that led up to the Civil War as well as some of the particulars of Gettysburg. I was tearing up during the opening scenes. Hearing about the stupidity of the situation in the first place (ie: ever thinking slavery was a good idea, mixing the rights of human beings with the profits of business etc etc) and then reflecting on the sheer loss of life. And then. I don't know. I couldn't help but think about the Trayvon Martin story and while yes, things are markedly improved from the days of slavery, the ramifications of that time period and the Civil War clearly haven't abated entirely. Men fought and died over something as dumb as race, and men continue to die over it whether they want to or not. I'm not a scholar. Nor do I have an incredibly nuanced view of race politics. It just made me so sad to think that all that blood spilled on both sides, and we haven't really grown all the way up as a nation on that specific topic. I'm not someone who has a fully rational or informed academic position on the true causes of the Civil War nor the true impact it had on our society. I was, however, struck by one part of the film that mentions the incredible destruction of the south's buildings and infrastructure, and how long and hard the process of rebuilding was, which of course played a role in subsequent decades of interaction between north and south, black and white. After the movie we took an escalator up to the cyclorama, which really is something to see. Oil canvas all the way around, the way they've set it up there are moments where the canvas stops and the rest begins. Then there were the exhibits and relics of the massive cleanup and burial process that all Gettysburg citizens had to deal with post-battle. Thousands of corpses taking months and months to properly bury or return to their families. The smell in some places must have been something.
Ok enough of my ill informed thoughts on the Civil War. We spent a nice chunk of time around the facility before braving the continued rain to pile into our two cars and go to the Outlets. Except I stayed in the car and read Pride and Prejudice while they shopped.

Hot Dogs and Fries c/o Ernie's Texas Lunch

Once I had eaten, I checked into the same hotel our family has predominantly stayed in ever since Helen's house was sold. This hotel, Quality Inn at General Lee's Headquarters (known by us and for all time as "Larson's"), holds almost as many memories at Helen's house. Even after her death, we'd still manage to meet up there about once a year, usually around Christmas. For a while now we haven't really done Christmas in Gettysburg, which is fine by me - it's COLD, but we still manage to get together about once a year or so. My mother's brother, Uncle E., could certainly be described as a creature of habit...which I think he very much gets from his father. And if you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you will not be surprised by the meals we enjoyed over the next few days. In any case. First I checked in. Then I went to the Appalachian Brewing Company restaurant, which is part of the hotel, and enjoyed myself a delicious stout while waiting for the rest of the folks to come in. Seriously good beer. If you have the chance, definitely check their line of beers out. Soon enough K. and A. and M. and A. and K. and I. all appeared and those of us of age enjoyed beers and a quick catch-up before further regrouping. Then we walked to Ernie's Texas Lunch, which like pretty much everything else in Gettysburg is steeped in my mother's family memories and lore. When my grandfather attended Gettysburg College, he ate there. When my mother and uncle were growing up and they'd visit the Fairfield relatives, they'd eat there. When my uncle went to Gettysburg College, he ate there. When my cousins and I were growing up and meeting up, well...you know...we ate there. And since I returned to the lower east coast after grad school, that tradition has most certainly continued. It was not terribly warm or pleasant, but given our diet for the next 48 hours, a walk did us all good. Little I. was not so keen on walking.

The kids didn't skip a beat once we were inside, lining themselves up at the counter while we took over the large table in the back, which for so so so many generations has had my family members gathered around it.

Fries on this day were hot but could have been a little crispier. You'll note that pretty much everyone not under the age of 12 chose lager for their beverage.

I have learned that I don't really love the full nine yards Texas dog, which comes with chili and heaps of onions. So I got two dogs just with mustard. Still nicely cooked. I think the slightly charred skin is my favorite part.

The staff is really nice, both front of house and back of house. One of the cooks came out and first asked the adults if it was ok to give the kids lollipops, and once given the 'ok' kindly doled them out. I. was quite pleased with hers.

And then I'm not sure exactly what this was about. But she's got pretty cool kicks.

And K. wanted me to take a photograph of this because he was 'a bridge' and he most certainly was. When K.-the OC (original cousin, there are a lot of abbreviated names starting with the same letters) and I were little (and, really, even in the last five years) we enjoyed jumping back and forth from bed to bed in the hotel's rooms. Now with this new generation of actual young people, we are most certainly bad influences...I didn't take any photographs of it, but all four kids, K. and I all jumped vigorously on the beds while the 'grown ups' were still on their way back.

And then, as we have done for as long as I can remember, we gathered around a table and played some cards. Hearts first for the older set, then UNO with the younger. Though I hadn't played hearts in some time, I did quite well. Actually, I think I did better than I ever did when I played it a lot back in the Chicago/France days.

Last Breakfast in Gettysburg

Well I'm back from a vacation, of which you will eventually see evidence...but now I gotta just get through this Gettysburg trip that happened in late February. Our last meal was at a '50s style joint pretty much catty-cornered from Ernie's, and if I recall correctly also had a man's name in its title. In any case it was a cold day, but we got a pretty sunny set-up, which kept us warm and gave me nice light for photos. A number of us ordered french toast, which looked pretty good.

I. seemed contemplative about her bites.

I had the two eggs, sausage and homefries combo. I would have liked my eggs just a little more cooked after being flipped but it wasn't anything tragic. Sausage and potatoes were good.

Then we all drove in our respective cars out to one of the battlefields. It was so unbelievably windy and cold that I don't think any of us were too excited about staying out in the elements for long, so then we splintered into two groups. I was in a group that went to check out outlet stores nearby. I was particularly interested in finding sunglasses, but ended up buying two pairs of jeans for $30.

And thus concludes the family weekend in Gettysburg.