FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Army Sgt. Biff Terkel didn’t flinch as he poured a piping-hot bowl of chili on his groin at the Texas Roadhouse outside of Fort Bragg.
“Didn’t feel it — I’m completely dead from the ankles up. Besides, Shirlena got my balls in the divorce along with my BAH and BAS,” Terkel said, grousing about his soul-numbing career as a urinalysis NCO with the 18th Airborne Corps with a mouthful of free peanuts he made sure to grind against the canker sore where his pinch of Red Man usually goes.
“At least chow is free tonight,” he told the waitress who asked where he got his barbed-wire arm tattoo, “Unlike your freedom.”
Texas Roadhouse is one of a growing number of establishments observing Memorial Day by not just honoring the nation’s war dead, but also honoring service members and veterans who are dead on the inside.
