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06/20/2003 Archived Entry: "Two Dozen Cozy Inn Burgers"

TWO DOZEN COZY INN BURGERS

David Morrison, like many aficionados, is a guy who would drive all the way from Denver to Salina for a sack of Cozy Inn's. His mother and our friend, Nancy, one of Brit's high school classmates, is here visiting and wanted to take some back to him on her return trip to Denver tomorrow. To save her driving to Salina for them, I offered to pick them up after seeing the doctor again about my sleeper machine and why I can’t smell anything. And after having lunch with Dane at Caper’s.

First, you have to know that there was a long time in our lives when Brit and I shared a car. That was from the time he first loaned me his snazzy green Pontiac convertible when I was at K.U. until the late 70s (we think!). There was a rule...don't eat or carry bags of Cozy's around in the car. It devastated the trade-in value. You never could get the smell out of the upholstery.

Well, I have my own car now with leather upholstery that is impermeable to the effects of Cozy grease and onion odors so I felt comfortable bringing them home for her. I put them in the refrigerator to chill so that she could later freeze them.

Well, when we went to retrieve them from the fridge, the smell just bowled Nancy and Brit to the far wall and it was all they could do to keep from eating them. To heck with David and his cravings. First thing first. And guess what? I couldn’t smell them in my car or in the refrigerator. It’s no fun not being able to smell that wonderful odor….but I remember what it’s like.

That reminds me. In our younger years, when I was a student at KU and he was a National Bank Examiner, way before we were married and I had a license to kill him, I invited Brit to a formal dinner dance in Salina. Before he came to pick me up, he went to the Cozy in his tuxedo to eat a stack of hamburgers because, he says, he thought there wouldn’t be enough to eat at the dinner. When he arrived to get me, he reeked of onions and grease. Well, that pungent odor never leaves your clothes and it was embedded in his tux. It's like the embarrassing smell of your wool coat your mom hands you the first cold day of winter that had been packed in all those loose moth balls all summer. You pray it doesn't rain because then you smelled not only like moth balls, but wet dead animal as well. You get the idea. Anyway, we were out on the dance floor in all our finery, spinning around, when someone waltzed by from the other direction, down wind, and said “Someone’s been to the Cozy Inn!” Everyone else had thought the same thing but had only smiled knowingly and whirled away. That was back in the days when my olfactory senses were very accute and he was about to lose his from one swift blow to the nose. He swears to this day that he never went inside the place and only ordered his half dozen at the outside window. Yeah righ!

That’s why there is a unwritten rule in many of the businesses in Salina, particularly those adjacent to the Cozy, that says employees who eat Cozy's will be fired on the spot. It’s like having a skunk run through the building spraying as he goes….as far as the odor staying power is concerned.

That little tiny place was packed today with 15 of us waiting for burgers at 1:30 p.m. I got my batch off the second grill. Everyone ordered a half dozen or more, enough to tide one over, except for me as I'd just eaten...and the two little old ladies sitting on stools in front of me who had one each. I hope I never get so old as to want only one.

Oh…there is a woman who works there now, the first I’ve ever seen.

Nancy’s two dozen burgers cost her $19.27, which is a far cry from the ones I grew up on when they were a nickel. That’s one place that hasn’t changed much at all over the years. The burgers taste the same. The cooks now wear gloves, the place is cleaner and they don’t have cream pies sitting out in the heat for days at a time as they once did. The Cozy is an institution where you eat them six at a time….and there is always a waiting line for one of the six stools. And for class reunions, it's not unusual to order up a batch of 40 or 50 dozen. I can almost smell them from here. They're addictive.