When Summer Is Beautiful

Sometimes you know you’re having a good summer while it’s ongoing; other times, you need distance and perspective to figure it out. At the time, the summer I turned ten, shortly after my mother died, didn’t strike me as all that great. But so many special moments got mixed into the hard times that I look back at it as one of the best summers of my life.

The summer of 2009 won’t need to be recast as one that improves with time. It’s not over yet, and already I am nostalgic, thanks to videos, photos and new friendships, for the experiences I enjoyed.

Virtually all of those good times relate to my being a Famous Fan in the Famous Dave’s summer promotion. Having an excuse to focus on a goal like my BarbeQuest, my journey to visit every Famous Dave’s restaurant in as short a time as possible, gave me a way to spend the summer in a creative bliss that I won’t be allowed until I sell a novel or something.

What I want to do here is fill in the gaps of experience not evident from the three hours of video I uploaded to YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarbeQuest.. You can see me entering 24 Famous Dave’s, being greeted by the staff, and talking with some of the workers who had tales to tell.

What you can’t see is what I learned off-camera: that these employees felt proud that I would take the time to come to their part of the world, that they were grateful for the opportunity to be a little bit famous on YouTube, that they were excited that people at other Famous Dave’s, as well as guests from their local community, could take a virtual tour of their store online at http://barbequest2009.com/.

One of the beautiful secrets of Famous Dave’s is the pride in ownership that each of the employees I met felt. This isn’t an employee-owned company, yet their dignity and the respect they receive make them fiercely loyal. When they move away from where they work, they hire in at another Famous Dave’s. When a fire closes their store for three months, they wait it out. In that particular case, the store paid the employees to do volunteer work. No wonder the employees are loyal.

It wasn’t only about employees, of course. Guests stopped by my table at every store to see what I was filming. On a few occasions, the guests were eager to share their love of Famous Dave’s with the world. Others promised to keep track of the BarbeQuest, which served my ultimate goal, to keep Famous Dave’s on the minds of a growing contingent of consumers. Every time they watched a video or read one of my tweets, the smell of hickory assailed their imagination. You know I’m right, because you just got hungry for Famous Dave’s too.

Having my car marked to draw people to Famous Dave’s helped; in Ohio, at a dinner stop in a town tragically distant from all Famous Dave’s locations, my car led to a conversation with a family that was heading to Philadelphia, where I had just visited the Whitman Square store. They took note of where to go, and they planned to tell George, the general manager, that Famous Fan Seán D. said hello.

On the road, I met a number of people from Somewhere Else; those who knew Famous Dave’s got hungry for it, and those who had never been there said they would give it a try, on my recommendation. From Wisconsin to Long Island, down to Kentucky and back to Minnesota, I experienced the joy of meeting many great Famous Dave’s people, many amazing guests, and numerous future guests.

Problems arose, as always happens. I lost a day in Indiana because my brakes began to grind prematurely. That day, along with the $250 the brakes cost me, made it necessary for me to skip the New England and upper New York stores on the first leg of the BarbeQuest. When I do Michigan, I’ll scoot over to New York and New England, which won’t be out of my way when I go back East.

As I was coming home, some work I was doing online became problematic, because I was arranging a student exchange between my school and one in Chile by email. Suddenly, my emails to my Chile contact started to bounce, but my school chose to assume that I could fix matters if I were in Minnesota. Not so; as of August 1, some of the details that had to be provided from Chile still had not been delivered to us. This aggravation didn’t hamper my enjoyment of my summer, though.

A major disappointment came at the end of July. I intended to spend the final weekend of the contest visiting all of the Chicago metro stores. The Tuesday before I would leave, a local St. Cloud driver sideswiped my car by trying to squeeze between me and a city bus. My car came back from the shop in time, but the check from his insurance company still hasn’t arrived, and here I sit, with my Chicago travel money in an insurance company’s bank account.

That may turn out well, because holding off on Chicago until next year allows me to work out some publicity from a Chicago television station where a good friend works. More on that when the time comes.

Already, events from the recent past come around to affect me again. A couple of days ago, one of the workers in Clarksville, Indiana posted a short video of their store, which had flooded that morning during a vicious thunderstorm. I called the store and learned that they were all well and would reopen the following day, but now I see that I will continue to feel a link, an invisible chain that connects me and these stores, for a long time.

And so, the summer of 2009 already ranks as one of the top three summers of my life. What made it possible was the ingenuity of the ad agency that came up with the concept, John Roach Projects in Madison, Wisconsin. What made it work out so well was the cooperation of so many Famous Dave’s locations, as well as the corporate blessing that enabled me to make these visits.

It’s ending tomorrow, this Famous Fan competition. The next time I post here, I’ll be a plain old fan. I’ll still be on my BarbeQuest, and I will indeed visit every location. One goal of mine is to highlight the Famous Dave’s decision to use existing architecture rather than buy a place, knock it down and put up a building that looks like every other Famous Dave’s. In these environmentally conscious times, reusing is a beautiful thing.

Thanks for reading, and for checking out the videos. There’ll be more to look at, so stay tuned.