My discovery started innocently enough at the Billy McHale’s eatery up in Lynnwood, you know, the place with the choo-choo train that goes round and round. Having a mighty hunger after a hard fought soccer match, I ordered up a veggie burger (another street name for it is “garden burger”). I might add that they have a special sauce there that puts McDonald’s to shame, a sort of thousand island dressing with zing, if you will. The burger was tasty enough, but the real shock came with the bill. Seeing as there were quite a number of us, we qualified for their team discount. But upon more careful review of the receipt, it appeared the “discount” was applied rather selectively. See, while my friends were paying a little over four dollars for burgers with cow meat, I was confronted with nearly an eight dollar bill for a veggie burger, probably consisting of plant materials not suitable for a compost pile.

When I queried the waitress about this unusual price discrepancy, she became vague and obtuse about the matter. Her response was that apparently the veggie burger manufacturers did not allow them to offer a discount, whereas they had more latitude with their menu items containing meat. Figuring she was a pawn in the whole scheme and who’s life would be in danger if she divulged any more information, I didn’t press her any further. So in essence, based on what she said, the makers of the veggie burgers were dictating the terms of sale to the restaurant.

Having gotten wind of this injustice, I decided to do a little more investigating into the matter. I dug up some more interesting tidbits from a credible source, who insisted on remaining anonymous. It appears the collusion of the veggie burger industry was in response to stiff competition from the cattle ranchers and has been going on for quite a number of years. It all started around the time that electricity and Freon combined to make refrigeration devices ubiquitous in the home, thus allowing for the easy preservation of the veggie patty for later reheating. However, this convenience posed a serious challenge to the meat mongers, whose product was quite susceptible to spoilage. In response, the cattle industry successfully lobbied the federal government for absurdly low user fees on BLM land. The veggie vagrants responded in the only way they could, price fixing.

(An interesting side note to this is that the person who invented Freon and other CFC’s, Thomas Midgley Jr., also put the lead in gasoline. In a pact between GM, DuPont and Standard Oil, these firms colluded to keep gasoline leaded and poison the earth for over 60 years, even when less toxic and more effective anti-knock agents like ethanol had been discovered. However, unlike the veggie industry, this arrangement was legal, they had a patent.)

While the veggie conspiracy has continued seemingly unbeknownst to the American public, it has left its mark on history. There is compelling evidence that there is some connection to the Kennedy assassination. Seems JFK was alittle too tight with the cattle ranchers, so the veg heads put a stop to that. What with the mafia’s ties to the meat industry, Jack Ruby’s murder of Oswald becomes an obvious case of revenge killing. The CIA, inept as ever, mistakenly believed it had something to do with the pro-Castro Cuban faction. Unfortunately, Marilyn Monroe is implicated in the whole affair, no pun intended, and there are disturbing connections to Chappaquidic.