Beer, Big Burgers Drive Home a Taste for Adventure

--The hamburgers weigh a manhandling 2 pounds and they bring the beer to the car, where you can sip the suds while still seated behind the steering wheel. To fast-food fans, it’s hog heaven at Ed Walker’s drive-in in Fort Smith Ark., home of the gargantuan burger and the state’s only license to serve beer to car-bound patrons. That the license was issued way back in 1943 has something to do with the drive-in’s liquor practices. Indeed, the original Ed passed away years ago, says current owner Mettie Bullington, 53, who has refused to change the drive-in’s name for fear the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board would take notice. Bullington, who first ate at Ed’s 37 years ago, says whether a patron orders the jumbo hamburgers says much about his spirit of adventure. “These folks will come in and order it just to get a kick out of doing it,” she said. “A lot of them end up taking a lot of it home.”

--Actor Sean Penn, serving a 60-day jail sentence for violating probation when he punched a movie extra and was cited for reckless driving, was freed after five days to go to Europe, where he will finish a movie commitment. He will return Aug. 22 to the remote Mono County Jail in the Sierra community of Bridgeport where, if he follows the pattern he has set so far, he’ll watch the two working channels on a beat-up black-and-white TV set and make some phone calls during the remaining time of his 60-day sentence. A sheriff’s records clerk who didn’t want to be identified said Penn shared a cell with as many as four inmates during his stay. “I thought he was very nice, very pleasant and very well-mannered,” the clerk said. “We talked a little . . . things like ‘How are you’ and ‘The weather’s fine.’ ”

--Pianist Vladimir Feltsman, his wife, Anna, and 4-year-old son, Daniel, finally set foot in the West after an eight-year struggle to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The Feltsmans were met in Vienna by Warren Zimmerman, U.S. ambassador to the current 35-nation Helsinki review conference on European cooperation and security, and Seymon Pinkhasov, a cousin of Feltsman who emigrated 11 years ago and now lives in New York. “Eight long years we have waited for this day,” Pinkhasov said with a sigh. Feltsman won several Soviet music prizes and had been widely recorded until he applied to emigrate in 1979.