The Wayback Machine
I've written before about being willing to boycott some companies (rot in hell, Hobby Lobby), but not Chic-Fil-A.
I did, for about ten years. Then Eli 10.0 had friends take him for lunch and he loved it because who wouldn't? So I started taking him and the boycott was over and hasn't yet returned.
I had a few spare minutes waiting for the subway today and went into the wayback machine.
The magical mall we went to in Corpus Christi was called Padre-Staples Mall. It opened on July 29, 1969, so I would have been a few months past eight then. The mall was a magical place for a kid who came from a town of 7,302 people. I don't remember the first time we went, but it was always a highlight of my weekend when we did. And it was half an hour away, so it felt like a journey.
I remember eating Chic-Fil-A for the first time and being stunned that anything could taste so perfect. What I didn't know was that when the Chic-Fil-A opened in Corpus Christi--the day the mall opened--it was only the eighth Chic-Fil-A location in the entire country, and the first in Texas.
How Corpus Christi was chosen is entirely baffling, as there were at least four other, far better cities (Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas). Corpus Christi only had about 200,000 people, which made it huge to me but quite small compared to the big four.
I remember the quality being a bit uneven (unlike today). Most of the time, though, it was spectacular, and I've never forgotten those memories. They still hit whenever I walk into one today.
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