Sure it looks like a healthy snack, but what about its ingredients?

Only at the Iowa State Fair – a Hot BEEF Sundae. It is comfort
food at its finest – a bowl generously filled with hand-mashed buttery potatoes surrounded by
slow-roasted fork-tender roast beef topped with savory beef gravy, sprinkled with Cheddar
cheese and finished with a ripe red cherry tomato. It is sure to satisfy the heartiest of appetites.

“We are always looking for new ways to promote beef,” states John Mortimer, manager of the
Cattlemen’s Beef Quarters. “This is our twist on an old favorite. Everyone loves hot beef
sandwiches and we’ve made it portable.”

According to the news release quoted above, it originated in Iowa a couple years back. Thank God it’s made it to the mainstream. Uh, the mainstream of Nebraska.

Yes, I’d eat it. I’ve also eaten a Luther Burger after making it myself though, so maybe I’m not the best indicator of caloric judgment.

Mom-and-pop service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon: Thousands of old-fashioned pumps can’t register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.

The pumps, throwbacks to a bygone era on the American road, are difficult and expensive to upgrade, and replacing them is often out of the question for station owners who are still just scraping by.

Many of the same pumps can only count up to $99.99 for the total sale, preventing owners of some SUVs, vans, trucks and tractor-trailers to fill their tanks all the way.

At Chip Colville’s Chevron station in this eastern Washington town, where men in the family have pumped gas since 1919, three stubby, gray pumps were installed when gas was less than $1 a gallon. They top out at $3.999, only 30 cents above the price of regular gas at Colville’s station.

“In small towns, where you don’t have the volume, there’s no way you can afford to pay for the replacements for these old pumps,” Colville said. “It’s just not economically feasible.”

Maybe this is just my big city mindset, but I’m inclined to say that Mom and Pop should both just die. Not my Mom and Pop, your Mom and Pop. I don’t really care about your small town problems, like increased expenditures, tornados, your daughter running off with a salesman who stumbled onto your farm, or black civil rights.