This content is available to subscribers and issue purchasers.
At first, the background voices sounded all alike, high-pitched and childish. A moment’s attention and you could make out the difference. Boys at one of the big tables, more than a dozen. Girls all about them, at tables for two or four. They all looked the same age, ten or eleven years old, but you could separate them by voice or body language or clothing styles: these here were centuries old, these others were in their teens. It was a rare restaurant that would host boys and girls together. McDonald’s was ancient. Its earliest clientele had been parents with young
