And all these years I thought it was something really fun to do on a date. 
Well, this is totally irrelevant to everything everyone is talking about, but I just wanted to add to the article.
In <I>Fast Food Nation</I> by Eric Schlosser we find that French fries came to the U.S. pretty early but, just as in other places, it didn’t catch on immediately. " Although Thomas Jefferson had brought the Parisian recipe for <I>pommes frites</I> to the United States in 1802, french fries did not become well known in this country until the 1920s…French fries were popularized in the United States by World War I veterans who’d enjoyed them in Europe and by the drive-in restaurants that subsequently arose in the 1930s and 1940s. Fries could be served without a fork or a knife, and they were easy to eat behind the wheel."
Who knew?
Any chance Schlosser backs up his WWI speculation with cites or at lease a bibliography?
He has a lot of cites and an extensive bibliography, but it’s true, he doesn’t show where he got that particular nugget of information.