The Wisconsin State Journal Doug Moe column: Moe: Gorske's Big Mac tally reaches 23,082

Oct 07, 2008 (The Wisconsin State Journal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- MCD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- A postcard dated Sept. 28 arrived recently at the State Journal and found its way to my desk.

The card said: "Today I'm Eating Big Mac # 23,082 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla."

The signature was hard to read, but it wasn't hard to figure out who had sent it.

Don Gorske, 54, who lives in Fond du Lac, and whose passion for the Big Mac sandwich at McDonald's has landed him in the Guinness Book of Records and on a couch chatting with Oprah Winfrey, is still out there.

And as the postcard indicates, he is still eating Big Macs.

"They are still my favorite food," Gorske said Tuesday. "I look forward to them every day."

Every day is not an exaggeration. Speaking by phone from his job as a guard at the Waupun Correctional Institution, Gorske said he has eaten one or two Big Macs every day since 1972, missing only eight days.

The most recent missed day was Nov. 23, 2000, which was Thanksgiving.

"I thought I had some in the freezer," Gorske said.

In the nearly eight years since, Gorske hasn't gone a day without a Big Mac. He's eaten them in all 48 of the continental United States. A sports nut, he's had a Big Mac in every Major League Baseball and NFL Stadium. He ate number 23,000 in August at his home McDonald's in Fond du Lac.

His health is good, Gorske said -- he's not overweight, and last missed a day of work 20 years ago -- and he sees no reason why he won't keep eating Big Macs every day into old age.

His wife, Mary, did tell him, "When I have to put them in a blender, it's over."

Gorske recently published a book about his life, and there are clues to his obsession in its pages. His family didn't have a lot when he was young. He loved hamburgers but the family rarely ate meat. He also writes about being obsessive-compulsive. He enjoys numbers, lists, order and routine.

Gorske can tell you the exact day when his odyssey began. It was May 17, 1972, and he was 18 years old. He bought his father's 1966 Dodge Polara for $500 and immediately drove to McDonald's and ordered the first Big Mac of his life. Actually, he ordered three.

He recalls the moment in his book: "They were absolutely the best thing I had ever eaten in my life!"

Gorske kept the sandwich cartons in the back seat of his car, counting them up at the end of the first month, then switching the count to a desk calendar.

Early on, he didn't talk much about his streak, but people close to him caught on. His mother tried to get him to eat one non-McDonald's meal a day. When he was courting Mary, and asked his mother's advice, she said, "Don't tell her you eat Big Macs every day and are keeping count."

But Mary stayed with him, Big Macs and all, and contributed a touching foreword to the book.

"I hope this book may encourage people to appreciate others who are different from the mainstream," Mary wrote, "but who can benefit the rest of us in some way if their talents are used in the right ways. I also hope that some of the readers may see that it is possible for an ordinary person to accomplish some very extraordinary things, and to encourage some of you to see the possibility of accomplishing some of your own dreams."

In 1986, Gorske was sitting at a picnic table in Fond du Lac, eating a Big Mac before a softball game, when Tom Strauss, a friend and school teacher, walked by and said, "Boy, you must really like those things."

"I sure do," Gorske replied. "This is Big Mac 7,350."

"What?" Strauss said.

"I count every Big Mac I eat," Gorske said. "I have counted every Big Mac that I have eaten since 1972."

"That's amazing," Strauss said. "Don't you think the public should know?"

"Know what?" Gorske said. "That I'm nuts?"

The next spring, as Gorske approached his 8,000th Big Mac, Strauss arranged for reporters from a Green Bay television station and the Fond du Lac paper to be on hand.

The early publicity came and went quickly, but a decade later, in 1997, it did not.

It marked the 25th anniversary of the start of Gorske's streak, and the Fond du Lac Reporter's front-page story in May (he was up to nearly 15,000 Big Macs) went worldwide on the wires.

In the next four days, Gorske did 40 interviews. He appeared with Oprah on May 28. The show had offered to send a limo from Chicago, but Gorske drove himself.

These days Gorske occasionally gets recognized by strangers. He appeared on a revival of the "I've Got a Secret" game show and showed up briefly in the anti-fast-food movie, "Super Size Me."

Gorske is not worried about others following his example.

"Who's going to eat Big Macs every day besides me?"

Doug Moe will discuss and sign copies of his latest book, "Favre: His Twenty Greatest Games," on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble West. Contact him at 608-252-6446 or dmoe@madison.com.

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