Midafternoon Nighthawks at the Waffle House

When I was in high school a friend of mine got caught with a bottle of vodka she stowed under her bed. We were fifteen or sixteen or something. Per her telling the bottle was three quarters full and her parents went nuts. They sent her off to a two-week rehab program and she came back with a shady rehab boyfriend and suddenly my high school class had a pot and acid connection.

I bring this up because I’m sitting in a Waffle House looking out a window at the vacant building that once housed the furniture shop owned by the parents of the shady rehab boyfriend. I say owned by but I’m not sure that Alexander himself could have untangled this particular knot as there were at least four ex-wives and one owned my favorite pizza place and another cut my hair. The title search would driven the most devoted bureaucrat nuts.

The windows are boarded up and the lot is empty. Weeds up to my waist are growing from cracks around the bumpers or whatever you call those lengthy but triangular things that keep you from pulling to far forward into another spot. Strangely, the grassy spots are perfectly mowed. Somebody is keeping the lawn up. It’s kinda weird. The building and parking lot have gone to hell while the grass is not quite Augusta like, but closer to than not.

When I was younger we, a cadre of similar degenerates, would show up at a Waffle House knock off. It was called the Coffee Shoppe and we would pronounce it “Shopp-ee” with the hard “e” on the end. Pretty much everybody’s curfew was twelve or twelve thirty so the place would get packed post date drop off as a bunch of jackass pubescent asshats made their way through the doors. There were two forces keeping stupid teenagers in line. The least of the two was the cops.

There was a cop table. At any given moment a couple of Mountain Brook’s finest would leave but there were always four of them and the couple of badges would be replaced by another forthwith. They rotated and the safest place to be in the Birmingham area may have been the back corner of the Coffee Shoppe while swarms of teenagers pretended not to smell like Milwaukee’s Best. I can’t guess that they ever closed a tab. It may be going now.

The primary force was a waitress named Pam. She knew us all. Every stupid teenager that passed through the place had her gaze upon them.

I got kicked out once.

My friend Jason and I thought we were being funny. We started flicking water at each other and it escalated into a near food fight. Pam was not amused.

She told us we were being jackasses and there was a stare from the police table so we left.

The next day we were hat in hand begging Pam’s forgiveness. I’m not kidding when I say that we were given a two-week probation. Think about what you did. Pam was forceful, but fair.

Pam died. This happened years later, but cancer crept up on her. She was there one day and then she wasn’t. That was new to me at that age. There is a generation of high school brats that knows her and will never forget her. She was kind.

I just took my kids to a Waffle House for the first time and it was amazing.

I had scrambled eggs with bacon and hash brown and one of my kids had a burger and the other went with sunny side up eggs that were never touched. But the food was so secondary to the company.

There were four guys with Barber Motor Sports shirts. There was a couple with two kids and a second couple with a baby and a toddler. One of the curses of working in restaurants is situational awareness. You earn it. You need to see who is a problem and who is not. People can make trouble and your job is to keep that from happening. Nobody in the restaurant was a real danger but you get attuned to things and you get ready for who is going to grate. You see right away who is going to interact smoothly and who is not. From my booth I spotted a problem.

The woman I noted came in briefly after we were seated. I knew immediately that she was going to frustrate the staff. She carried the carriage of a person ready to be displeased.

She sat two booths from us and she was none too pleased with her eggs. They were too runny.

She would say aloud to no one in particular that she didn’t have enough napkins even though there was a box of the damn things on her table. She would look around and ask for more water when her glass was full and despite temperatures in the high eighties she was wearing a cardigan over what I can only assume were her going out pajamas.

I avoided eye contact as best I could. My oldest ate his burger and hash browns and whatever I didn’t finish followed with a side of whatever his brother left on his plate. There isn’t enough food to satisfy that bourgeoning giant.

Our waitress was wonderful. She realized immediately that my boys were going to be guzzling Diet Coke and rather than roll that ball uphill for eternity she brought out iceless cups of the stuff so they could replenish at will. Bless her Venus flytrap eyelashes.

The guys were finishing off the last of the generous soda cups while I went to the counter to pay.

On my way back, the fancy pajama clad problem called out to me.

“Are those your boys?”

I suppose I could have been a benevolent uncle or something but I was hard pressed to see how they weren’t my boys and I’ve got an unfortunate southern upbringing so I put on my smile and thank you face that’s reserved for strangers and said “They are.”

“Good looking.” she said. “They look like you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” and I start the kids collecting themselves and that is a considerable chore given notebooks and pens and suddenly phones and kindles.

“I want to give you something.” says the pajama lady, and I’m on guard now but I’m also, given the pajama lady, the Venus flytrap eyelashes, and the despite surly looking tattoos who was really nice cook lady, the most obviously dangerous person in the building. So, okay.

She gave me a penny.

It’s the most decrepit penny I’ve ever seen. You need eyeglasses to verify the Lincoln Memorial and the other side is a ridiculous mess. There’s a Booth joke in there but that’s for someone braver that me.

She said “When you find a coin it’s good luck, but when you give a found coin to someone it’s double luck.”

I wanted some hash browns. That was my goal for the day.

What do I do with this penny?