How 'bout a Miner's Burger?

How 'bout a Miner's Burger?

For years I had heard my wife tell stories of one of her teenage haunts, Miner's Drive Inn in Yakima, Washington.

The stories told of incredibly large, juicy, tasty hamburgers, massive portions of crispy french fries, and luscious, rich shakes.

These are my kind of stories!

So, what better way to work off Thanksgiving dinner than to confirm the veracity of these stories the next day after getting stuffed on turkey?

According to their website, and a comprehensive display inside the restaurant, Miner's begn in April 1948 when Ed Miner bought the old Pete Agor home and built the Miner's Drive In. Today, Miner's has a staff of 70 and a third- family generation is continuing the family tradition.

Miner's is, simply put, the largest quick-service operation I've ever seen, and I grew up in southern California, birthplace of the famous In-N-Out Burger chain. Even before I ordered the rumored-to-be-huge burger, I noticed a number of massive things at Miner's:

-- Two long drive-up lanes with multiple menu boards so several cars could order simultaneously.

-- An expansive kitchen with an assembly line not unlike In-N-Out, only larger.

-- Two dining rooms which must've been a total of 5 or 6 thousand square feet.

Onto the food. While you can order everything from a double chili cheese dog, to a BBQ beef sandwich, there really is only one thing to order on a first visit to eastern Washington's fabled burger joint.

The Big Miner Burger measures nearly 7 inches in diameter, both bun and patty. By default, it comes loaded with a large fresh tomato slice, shredded lettuce, sliced white onions (grilled on request), pickles, mayo, and hamburger relish. You order at one of several cashier stations, then receive a table number on a tall metal stand, so the servers can find your table amidst the sea of tables in one of the two auditorium-size dining rooms.

The order took long enough to arrive so you know they're cooking your food to order, but not so long so the food arrives less than hot. I'd say the order-to-eat wait time is about the same as In-N-Out, around 12 minutes.

The burger is quite good, but the patty, while extraordinarily wide, isn't as thick as I had expected. The overall taste makes up for the patty-size shortcomings, however. The fresh condiments really work with the super-size bun to make a complete meal that (nearly) fits into one's mouth.

Update: On a subsequent visit, I ordered a "Taco Burger" but was disappointed when it arrived as a patty-based burger with salsa and sour cream, and not a "bun taco" with taco meat like Del Taco used to make. Oh well.

The fries are crisp and bountiful, you'll only need one order for a group of three. And the chocolate shake was the perfect accompaniment to the meal: rich, thick, and appropriately tough to suck through the straw.

Now I've got my own tales to spin about the gargantuan burgers and tasty fries at the place called "Miner's" east of the Cascade Mountains.

Miner's Drive-In Restaurant
2415 S. 1st Street
Yakima, WA 98903
(509) 457-8194
Open 8:30 a.m. 7 days a week
Closing times vary

From Fragments from Floyd:

Yes, it concerns me that while this page once had something almost every day about the real world of ridge and meadow, it now contains something almost every day about my doings, my complaints, my things or potential things. Baggage.

It bothers me too how much of my day is spent sitting watching letters appear as my fingers lift and fall; I read the words—my words like chewed cud—to myself silently while the world turns colors and blooms the other side of window panes that might as well be the bars of a cage.

I am trapped in an ergonomic chair. Self-condemned to a sedentary day of pointing, clicking, cutting and pasting. I’ve been banished from the island, and I was the only one who voted.

What ever happened to the balanced life? Where will I find the path that carries me back? And he answered:

For every hour typing, walk an hour.

For every page written, read one in a book.

For every hour inside, spend one under the sun.

For every minute indugled in self, help someone else.

For every dollar spent on (un)necessary toys, give one away.

For every minute blogging, read a blog.

Past your prime? You can’t know that. Bloom late.

For every hour of sitting, stand-walk-run-climb-lift-push-pull an hour.

For every whining want, give thanks for blessings owned.

For every pain, find something that doesn’t hurt. Surely there’s something.

For each day that dawns, be awake. And caffeine can’t help here. Awake. Now.

In all the parts, see the whole.

And don’t stop having these conversations with yourself. You are your best audience.

Listen. Do what’s needed. Do what’s right.

Amen to that, Floyd!

Why I always check in on Rebecca Blood:

"Things I have learned:

• Someone loves me.
• It always gets better.
• Take a chance.
• Everyone can make a difference; everyone does make a difference.
• The map is not the territory.
• Embrace the unexpected; cherish the routine.
• I am blessed."

This is an ugly, smoggy, hot day in Seattle. Beautiful.

Web Sites That Shorten Long URLs: "The following free web sites can take a long URL and give you back a shorter URL without requiring registration. Any of these services will do a good job, but if you want to study them before you pick one, here is an informal survey of the competitive landscape."

Bob Hope one-liners on politics:

"Richard Carlson: 'A zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly, with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.'
Hope: 'You mean like Democrats?'
— from 'The Ghost Breakers' (1940)

Nydia Westman: 'Do you believe in reincarnation, you know, that dead people come back?'
Hope: 'You mean like Republicans?'
— from 'The Cat and the Canary' (1939) "

Poynter Online - The Design Desk: "Are you feeling uninspired? Maybe your work has become routine and doesn't hold your interest. It may be time to get back in touch with the things that first inspired you. The life you build and things you do outside the newsroom are key to being creatively charged in your job. "

Poynter Online - The Design Desk: "If you're still using the Web-safe color palette of 216 colors, here's a better solution -- More Crayons. More Crayons is a site developed by Kirk Franklin that expands the Web-safe palette to a 'Web-smart' palette of 4,096 colors. "

Newspapers should let reporters blog away, says OJR editor: "Online Journalism Review editor Michelle Nicolosi would love to see Orange County Register science reporter Gary Robbins get into blogging. 'He knows so much, he's finding things out all the time' and many items that don't get into the Register would make good blog entries. Nicolosi tells Dan Rohn: 'More papers should think about setting up reporters with blogs. Working on them should be optional -- not mandated -- and reporters should be given the freedom to have a little personality in their blog, to link offsite, to post pretty much as they see fit. If they do a bad job, cancel it.'"

“If hypertext really becomes available, especially in the fancy versions now being talked about -- where words, sounds, video, computer graphics, simulations and more are available at the touch of the screen -- well, it’s hard to imagine anyone capable of preparing the material. It will take teams of people. I predict there will be much experimentation, and much failure, before the dimensions of this new technology are fully explored and understood.” -- Donald A. Norman: The Design of Everyday Things (1988)