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| A Waffle House menu featuring The All Star Breakfast (upper left). I was unable to find visual documentation of a sight that is actually quite common: a view of a Waffle House from the front door of another Waffle House. |
Nancy had mentioned to her that we were traveling over the Memorial Day weekend, and how we looked forward to glutting ourselves on a stupendous Waffle House breakfast - a treat we can only allow ourselves on special occasions lest we balloon up like unto the hippopatomi that diet not and neither can they see their toes. Well Nancy's friend made a comment like, "Feh." ("Feh" was her actual word unless I mistake.) "Who likes Waffle House?"
At the time Nancy revealed this astonishing news we were seated in the booth having just been served our four plates apiece of breakfast. The All Star Breakfast - waffles, eggs, bacon, toast, hashbrowns - requires at least three plates to serve.
In my opinion, a person who doesn't like Waffle House is the same sort of person who's too snooty to consider stepping into a WalMart or eating cold pizza for breakfast. The sort of person who's never - even for one minute - watched roller derby or will admit to being licked on the face by a golden retriever. This is not a person who'll pull and eat fresh crackling from a smoked pig sitting in a wheelbarrow, as I have done. In short, a snob.
Waffle Houses are more plentiful in the southeast than Baptist Churches and in fact, I've thought churches could shore up flagging membership by offering waffles and syrup at communion instead of bread and wine, but for some reason, around north Tennessee, they begin to peter out, and disappear entirely at the Mason-Dixon. This is a mystery and one of the things that makes me suspiscious of northerners.
People who don't like Waffle House are the sort of people who can't enjoy their food if their waitress calls them "darlin" or smokes Marlboro Lights on breaks. They don't like it if the men in the next booth have baseball caps but not shirt sleeves and have just come from a construction site and are discussing NASCAR. They don't like ordering from a menu with pictures, although really, nothing could be handier or simpler; the bashful teen mother en route to a parole hearing for smashing out the headlights of her boyfriend's pickup need not speak the words but can just point to the desired items.
There are some things, of course, the man of discernment won't eat at a Waffle House. The posters on the walls announced that the t-bone steak was bidding adieu. I have never eaten a Waffle House steak, and the news that soon I would lose the opportunity forever left me unmoved. But I love Waffle House and I don't give a damn who knows it. I just love it.
