The Points Don’t Matter

In Kansas, there’s a fast-food chain trapped in the 1950s called Spangles.

Think chrome.

Milkshakes.

Booths stuck in a time warp.

Burgers stacked with more intention than architecture.

It’s a mausoleum of laminated cool.

Men who once sold cigarettes and rebellion, now taped beside napkin dispensers.

Marilyns on every surface.

Blond, glossy, grinning like that chili dog’s not gonna end in a prayer.

At times it smelled like food wearing someone else’s body.

The smell of warning.

Yelp carried the testimonies

Some were written in a rage so profound it felt biblical.

One spoke of food poisoning from both the burger and the ice cream.

A dual affliction.

And yet I came back, like the faithful do.

Back in the early 2010s—maybe 2011—I found out about a promotion:

if you earned enough points through their loyalty program, you could be in a commercial.

Not a coupon.

Not a free drink.

A commercial.

I saw it immediately:

Me, center booth.

Cheeseburger in my right hand.

Left hand flashing deuces.

A camera panning by.

So I committed.

I said yes.

Quietly.

Already rehearsing the humility school pickup would require.

I gave them everything.

My loyalty.

My money.

My GI lining.

I changed my routes for them.

I engineered it into our day.

My kids thought I was being generous.

“Hey boys, you uhh hungry? We’re passing Spangles, no pressure.”

But there was always pressure. 

Internal. 

Eternal.

Commercial-bound.

We ate it. 

For years. 

For the mission.

The walls watched.

Elvis watched.

A statue suspended mid-jump.

Forever stuck between pelvic thrust and prophetic warning.

The tile floor echoed with the whispers of expired coupons and sodium-induced hallucinations.

Years passed.

I aged like a secret under heat lamps.

And one day—just one regular day—I asked.

“Hey, uhh how many more points till I’m in the commercial?”

The cashier blinked like I’d just spoken in ancient Greek.

She was seventeen and spiritually unprepared.

She called for someone older.

Someone wiser.

A man named Thomas emerged.

Thomas was seasoned.

He looked like he’d worked every station, at every Spangles, all at once.

He looked at me with sympathy and said:

“Ma’am… that ended over five years ago.”

I heard nothing after that.

The neon flickered. 

The jukebox died.

Elvis fell silent in his fiberglass cage.

Thomas looked genuinely sorry.

Not corporate sorry.

Thomas offered me a consolation cheeseburger—using my points, of course.

I accepted it like a widow accepts a folded flag.

Knowing exactly what it cost.

I ate it slowly.

No lights. No camera.

Just a burger.

I still threw my duces.