Like a comet, a total eclipse, or an old friend, it has returned!

No, not the pumpkin spice latte, which, all apologies to Bond villain Hugo Drax, has appeared with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season. 

No, I mean everyone’s favorite 1980s-menu-flop-come-legendary-limited-time menu item —McRib!

McDonalds is actually calling it “McRib season.” Sip on that with your PSL. Seriously, is “PSL” an acceptable term now? It keeps popping up in things I read, but one place I didn’t read that was in my style manual.

Anyway, McRib. Made of some sort of pressed pork and shaped into a boneless rack-shaped patty, drenched in a neon-red barbecue sauce, topped with onions and pickles and served on an oblong bun, McRib has made periodic and more infrequent returns to the menu in select markets over the years.

Those of us obsessed with the strangely “McRib-flavored” sandwich — who I now will officially deem “McRib Nation” — will climb mountains and swim oceans to find it.

Well, maybe not all that, but we’ll drive a few miles. Maybe not as far as Homer Simpson, but a few miles.

Yes, even “The Simpsons” paid homage to McRib — sorry, Krusty Burger called it a “RibWich,” but we all knew the special sandwich Homer craved.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the McRib was born in a lab, the result of a National Pork Producers Council effort to get pork on fast food menus. The patty that emerged looked like a pork chop, NPR reported in 2011, Mickey D’s came up with that infamous rib-like shape.

In all likelihood, McRib would never have attained its coveted status had it not been pulled from the menu. In my experiments, and I’ve run a few, one McRib will do the trick for a while.

But through the ingenious marketing tactic of only making it available for short, relatively unpredictable periods, it creates a feeding frenzy among the crazed, McRib starved masses.

Even by McDonalds standards, the McRib furor on social media was overwhelming. There are websites dedicated to “finding McRib near me” that seemingly popped up overnight. The official one is called “McFinder.” What, you thought it would be called something else?

Stories were posted news outlets nationwide — my iPad was inundated with breaking news alerts following the announcement of McRib’s return. I mean, this is big stuff! Some idiots even write columns about it!

And it works! For me, nowadays, McDonalds is a sometimes treat. I can’t take the calories, I can’t take the heartburn, and I spend a lot less time behind the wheel of my car, throwing down a value meal before covering something.

But dangle a McRib out there, and I’m right back in line. Like Michael Corleone, just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in!

Obsessed? Maybe. But before you go blaming this kind of thing on men of a certain age, who spent Saturday mornings watching cartoons and knew who the “Fry Guys” were, I will point out my significant other dragged us around to every McDonalds in New England on her desperate, fruitless search for a McLobster Roll last summer. 

We won’t even mention Shamrock shakes.

McRib isn’t even some silly regional specialty like McLobster, it’s nationwide and only available for a limited time at select locations!

Yep, that’s right folks, if you don’t get one now, McRib goes back in the vault until next time. Just like that timeless Disney classic on VHS, it may be years!

Seriously, I think they actually do that. I’m pretty sure the stuff doesn’t go bad. That sauce is probably some sort of government lab mega-preservative.

​Truthfully, I had no doubt this day was coming, I just hadn’t thought through all the ramifications. After one more winter in the north to prepare his house for sale, my dad is moving to Florida.

I had plenty of time to prepare. My father is a great thinker, and at heart, a conservative guy, so any life-altering decision takes time. I also know once he’s made a decision, he acts quickly, so I wasn’t taken off guard as some of his friends and neighbors might have been. 

That doesn’t change the fact it is a monumental event for me.

With the exception of a couple of distant memories, that house on the edge of Amish country was the only home I ever really knew. Even though I moved out when I was 19, and I’ve lived many places since, and even now owning my own home, my roots are in the Delaware Valley.

I spent the entirety of my youth in that school district, and several of my friends still live in the area. Many of the activities, restaurants and sports I enjoy are there. No matter where I live, “where I’m from” and “home” are synonymous to me. Even after I moved away, I always had a base to operate from.

This isn’t sour grapes. It’s exactly the right move for Dad. Many of his friends from his old neighborhood have settled in Florida, while many in the north have moved away. He doesn’t enjoy the cold. And for a man living on his own, a two-story house on two acres of fairly open ground requires more attention than he wants to give it at this point.

I knew early on I didn’t want to take on the house, either. It’s a great place to raise a family, but while it’s full of memories and the big yard was perfect for keeping a kid entertained, I always knew it was too much house and too much yard for adult me and the life I have chosen.

The difficulty for me is just “change.” The closing of a chapter spanning nearly 45 years of my life. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of reminders this winter as we help him decide what of his belongings he is taking and what he is parting with. Still, with Dad spending one more winter up this way, we’ll have an opportunity to get in a few of our old favoritethings before he heads out.

Changes, big and small, are inevitable. You can try to fight it, but holding back change is like holding back water. Eventually, it seeps through. It’ll be an adjustment to get used to having to rent a place to stay when I go back to the home country, but in fairness, much of it is becoming hard for me to recognize. 

I recently got lost on a highway “back home” because all the landmarks I remember are gone and have been replaced by the same strip malls you can find in Anytown, U.S.A. Most of my favorite watering holes and restaurants have gone away. My old high school, though the same building, has been so extensively remodeled I couldn’t find may way to any of my old classrooms. Heck, it even has football now.

No, it’s important for all of us, no matter what our age, to embrace change and live in the present. It can be hard to let go of the past, but neither can you wallow in it, nor can you bend it to your will 

And, hey, look at the benefits.

Should the kid choose to go to college in Florida, Dad and I will be neighbors. On the other hand, if she chooses someplace up north, I’ll appreciate being able to escape the cold climes with a visit over the winter. 
​
But, most important, I look forward to my Dad’s next adventure. He deserves it.

I love the way things “used to be.” Old styles. Old music. Mine is an idealized version of the past, I’m sure, but one I find hard to let go.

And one of the links to the past I love most are trains.

I’m not sure when that love affair began, but I’m certain it had something to do with setting up my Dad’s train platform for the holidays, the true sign the Christmas season was near. Or, perhaps it was the trips into Philadelphia for special events. Regardless, I was smitten.

Even in my adult life, a year of riding Septa Regional Rail for work couldn’t spoil it, neither could eight years of commuter rail from West Virginia into D.C.

In fact, I even met my partner in crime on the train, and one of our best dates was a trip to NYC. It was certainly one of our most romantic, even though she has had enough of trains to last a lifetime.

Sadly, like all things that harken to another era and another way of life, change is inevitable.

A few months back, Amtrak announced the mechanical train board at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station was being replaced. If you ever heard it, it is a sound you’d never forget. The clattering as the board updated arrival and departure times transported you back to a golden era.

The first time I heard the board was as a college student. The train offered a convenient way to my childhood home outside Philadelphia. There was a special feeling those days calling a taxi to take me to Union Station, waiting to board with the holiday travelers and military folks heading home on leave, and making the relatively short hop to Philly.

Union Station in Washington was and still is an architectural wonder, but there was something special about 30th Street Station, once the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Art Deco decor, the statues, marble floors, and that famous mechanical board. If the holidays weren’t already special enough, it was the icing on the cake. I was home, among my people.

Now it’s gone, consigned to a museum and replaced by a digital board. Superior technology? Yes, but better? Eh...

Then came word last week that Amtrak was doing away with the dining car.

When I think back on some of my favorite classic films — “North By Northwest,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “From Russia With Love” — one common aspect is the dining car. Mystery, sophistication — you can’t touch it. Class.

On Amtrak trains, with their fine linen and top-class fare, they are another link back to the romanticism of yesteryear. Think Glenn Miller. “Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer, then to have your ham ‘n’ eggs in Carolina.”

Now, they too will be placed in the ash heap of history, victim of cost cutting and a public that would rather eat a box meal in their room or carry something on from the station.

As my father put it, “Now we can eat ‘coach’ without having to go to the airport.”

I have no doubt that modernizing the train is necessary to make it competitive. I’ve spent enough time traveling by rail to understand the economic challenges. But in modernizing, we lose something. It just becomes another utility, just another conveyance, much like air travel in the last few decades. We lose the mystery, both in ourselves, and in our fellow travelers.

These old services, like the old stations that dot the landscape — more and more of which are closing forever every day — are like ghosts, reminding us of a bygone era when it wasn’t just about the destination, but the journey.

I, for one, long to take that sentimental journey.