If any of you fine people are not from south of the Mason Dixon Line you may not be aware that there is a razor thin line between cuisine and grub. Mostly the difference is price, but in every finer circle Okies will pick grub every day of the week and thrice on Sunday. Oklahoman's consider white sausage gravy a beverage and chicken fried steak food of the God's. And, once again I must remind you that if you are not from this area that chicken fried steak is not at all what it sounds like. Chicken Fried Steak (here and after referred to as CFS) is not chicken, it's not exactly steak, and it's not fried. Confounded? You should be. Around these parts a piece of white bread folded gently around a hunk of Velveeta is considered eating high on the hog. Essentially, grub is nothing more than a mass of carbs, when ingested in a big enough ball will make you seek out the perfect place for a two-hour nap.
The good news is grub tastes great but sadly it sticks to your arteries like that cold sore you contracted at a Courtney Love concert. I started to use the word received in place of the word contracted in the last sentence, but that isn't exactly accurate. You receive tube socks from your granny on your tenth birthday, you contract a social disease, there is a distinct difference. Now back to the topic at hand. To be sure the king of all grub before, during, and after the fact is the Waffle House. You don't even have to be either literate or sober to eat there. They have pictures of the food right on the menu so all you need to do is point and grunt. Think of it like prehistoric man, gnawing on mastodon bones and making cave drawings of gimpy gazelles. Nothing could be more primal, yet at the same time somewhat entertaining. It's funny that as Americans we have come full circle with the inevitable invention of the salad fork and the white starched napkin, but most of us still prefer to eat crappy burritos on the run. Cheap Mexican food was made exclusively for stoners. If you want to refute that hypothesis, remember that Taco Bell has a taco on the menu that is wrapped in a giant nacho cheese Dorito, if that doesn't say "please pass the bong and the hot sauce I'm not sure what would.
Waffle House (here and after referred to as WH) is open 24-7. That means that they will serve you your heart attack on a plate with a twenty percent discount off your next angioplasty anytime of the day or night. I often wonder why hospitals don't offer discounts, if a man can get a two-for-one deal on a loaf of bread he should be able to get a price break on something that really matters like an appendectomy. WH is glad to serve you on any major holiday whether it's high noon on the 4th of July or joyfully wearing an elf hat at midnight on Christmas eve. That artery concoction they refer to as Whirl knows no holiday. Whirl is a foodstuff made mostly of hydrogenated vegetable oil that loosely resembles melted butter. the word foodstuff has always confounded me, is it food or is it stuff? In the case of WH it could be both. We are all aware that this stuff will kill you, and everything cooked on the flattop at WH is swimming in it. In addition, WH is very good at getting the job done, even to a go-getter like me. If one of their fry cooks is carted off to jail on a Friday night at midnight, (for reasons that cannot be discussed in Sunday School) they will have his replacement sweating over bacon strips and sausage patties by 6AM the next morning. You will think I am making this up just for journalistic effect, but FEMA actually has a rider in their bylaws called the "Waffle House Index." This bylaw states that the severity of any national disaster can be rated by how many WH's in that area are either still open or closed after a storm. But hey, this is America, should we be at all shocked to find out that a fast-food joint is better prepared for a hurricane than a branch of the federal government. I am certainly not. And lest we forget, it took FEMA five days to get bottled water to the Superdome during hurricane the Hurricane Katrina fiasco. That's not a political dig, it's a fact.
WH is also the only "restaurant" in town where every one of their employees know the words to the song REDNECK WOMAN by heart, and they are not happy unless they are singing it at the top of their lungs. And, just in case you were not aware of its Gretchen Wilson is our generations answer to Tanya Tucker and trying to get the smell of Marlboro Lights out of her hair would be damned near impossible. I mean she said it herself "I'm no high class broad." The waitresses too are top shelf, what's not endearing about a woman wearing a hair net, a little black fuzz on her top lip, and (most) of her tattoo's spelled correctly. But just for the record I'd rather have a waitress smacking her gum a little too loudly and calling me "hun" than trying to have a conversation with a waiter who considers himself a Harvard man. And applying for a job at WH could not be easier. They have an application next to the register that is green and just about the size of a bookmark, but it is missing only one thing: a spot for a parole number. I recently brought that fact up to one of their managers and she failed to find the humor in my little joke, maybe it's possible she too has a parole number.
My son also loves WH, and I have tried on many occasions to get my wife to eat there but she refuses. The truth is she may just be the smartest one out of all of us. I worked in the food industry long enough in high school to spot a health infraction at twenty paces, and at the WH one can usually see three no no's the minute they darken the door. But one thing is for sure, they are one up on the likes of McDonalds because your food can never be spit on without your knowledge. Everything at WH is cooked right out in the open for all to see. Any man who loves coffee so strong they have to chew it before they can swallow it and could float an egg is bound to let those health concerns slide. And while the quality of the food can be (at best) uneven, and other times (at worst) tragic the conversation is always stellar. It's essentially a case study in what the parameters are for being poor white trash. Not so long ago I talked to two ladies at the WH who had clearly (and accidentally) stayed on the wrong side of town and bedded down at the Crazy 8's motor lodge. One of them overnight had also contracted a case of bed bugs. I find that not all that shocking as the place is well known for harboring Lot Lizards' and requesting that patrons put up a deposit on the sheets. Up until then I had always wondered what the sign meant when it advertised "Hourly Rates." Comedian Jim Gaffigan has a comedy bit he does about WH, that goes something like this: "Waffle House's slogan should read, it's only 2AM, there is still time to make one more bad choice." I will up the ante on that and add that there should be a yellow and black sign in the parking lot showing a person on their hands and knees worshiping the porcelain gods and should read "drunk crossing."
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