Woody Cavenaugh

Yesterday Sara and I went to a restaurant we had never been to before. It was out of the way for us, however we had a $25.00 gift card. That made it too attractive to us to ignore.

We looked over the menue carefully. Sara went with a cajun shrimp and pasta dish. I went with a burger. I didn't exactly want the burger, but I had to have this one particular burger. I was unable to resist its Siren's song. This was the Super Ultimate burger. A pound of meat.

Sara was extremely unhappy. The women of IT are overall dealing with a sharp rise in the number of husbands with heart trouble and this sandwhich came with a Surgeon General's warning.

What was I thinking? Why did I do it? Do I have a deathwish?
Nothing. Because it was there. I don't know.

But I do know this. The Guiness book is filled with people who did things just to see if they could. Over a thousand people have made it to the summit of Everest and back. Just under 200 lost their lives trying. They did it because it was there. They had no choice.

In the history of the Cavenaugh family going back to Ireland, there were brave warriors who faught hard to be kings of a kingdom. They faught hard to keep it, and they faught hard when they lost it during the Jaccobien war. My ancestors were murdered, sold as slaves and chased all the way to the shores of America where my branch stopped running and settled in Duplin County NC in 1800.

In my blood is the blood of kings, my ancestors conquered lands, all I can manage to conquer is a big cheeseburger. But I have to do it anyway, because the cheeseburger is there, and I have a biological compulsion to conquer that has been watered down over the course of several hundred years.

I think back fondly on other conquest I have made. My first whole pizza, my first whole chicken, my first dish served to me on a 20 gallon trash can lid, my first two pound steak, my first trip to the donuts on top of Pikes Peak, Hardee's Monster Burger, and now this burger.

It isn't a kingdom, but to be fair there isn't much land left to be conquered in this old world. Maybe I could conquer a salad instead of meat. Probably not. There just isn't much fight in a one pound salad.

And I have my ancestors to think about.