Above: The cafe I stopped at for my second breakfast this morning. I never heard of beer described this way before!
Never before have I been so obsessed with greasy, buttery, messy, home-cooked breakfasts. I usually eat a breakfast before I break down my campsite each morning, but by around 10:00 a.m., I find myself craving homefries, eggs, biscuits, and anything else capable of bringing about heart failure.
Thankfully, the south is home to some of the best breakfast joints I’ve ever come across. They’re cheap, filled with friendly locals, and guaranteed to fill up a hungry cyclist.
This morning, as I passed through a quiet town and neared its outskirts with a rumbling stomach, I spotted a sight that makes my heart skip a beat: A parking lot full of pick-up trucks fanned out around a small trailer like a hand of cards.
I knew that the trailer had to be home to only one of two business–either an auto body shop or a greasy breakfast cafe. I got closer and saw a faded, stained sign out front that advertised the special of the day, a fried steak and eggs number, and veered the bike over across the road.
When I walked into the place, as is typical when I enter small cafes in the south thanks to my cycling gear and my strange looking metal steed parked out front, everyone in the place looked me over from head to toe. But, also as is usual, everyone said hello and asked me how I was doing. I took a seat, looked at the menu, and ordered up some eggs, homefries, and biscuits. It didn’t take long before an older man seated at a long bench table filled with flanneled diners spoke up.
“You gotta heater on that thang or what?”
“No sir, but I sure wish I did. It’s freezing out there today.”
The man’s wife, a petite woman with short hair and nice teeth, smiled and asked the question I hear most often.
“Where ya from?”
I told them.
Eyebrows shot up around the table like hairy face fireworks.
“Sweet Jesus, how many miles you do a day on that thang?” one man asked.
“Well it depends. About 50-60. With this tailwind though, I can do 70 or more if I’m lucky.”
“70?! Thas almost wha I can do inna day in ma truck!” another man exclaimed.
All at the table were local farmers who were born and raised in the area. They came to the cafe most mornings to sip coffee and chat. At one point, a new customer walked in, a man everyone in the cafe knew but hadn’t seen in a while, and someone called out, “Well whattayaknow! How you been Henry? Haven’t seen you round in foreva!”
The man plopped down on the bench, took off his dirty white cowboy hat, exhaled loudly, and said, “Ya know, jus workin. Lotsa work. Cuttin cows, haulin cows, bailin hay–same ol, same ol.” The farmers at the table nodded and shook their heads as if they personally knew the type of exhaustion trapped up in the webs of lines that extended from the corners of the man’s eyes.
I felt out of place but welcomed at the same time. I didn’t speak or say much as the farmers conversed because listening required so much concentration. With heavy accents, they quipped about the weather, politics, health, and most of all, work and finances. Colloquial slang permeated sentences riddled with farming references.
One man who gave up farming to become a trucker told of his father’s recent social security woes.
“I wen down to that office way out innda city and I sat there like a sack a grain for three days. Three days yall! I told em how his checks ain’t right. You know that lady there jus laughed at him? Laughed at ma father. Then she says, ‘Well, maybe if he worked more, if he paid more innda it, he’d get bigga checks.’ Worked more? I heard that and I got hot unda the colla. I almose came unglued, I did. I said, ‘Miss, you an I couldn’t a worked one day of my father’s work on his easiest day! I seen him load and unload four grain trucks by shovel when I’s a kid. Don’t tell me he ain worked!”
Everyone laughed.
This type of banter went on for an hour. During that time, the following things were said:
–”Hell, I a listened to what all them doctors say, I’d a spit out every thing I put in ma mouth the second it tastes good.”
–”I know this’ll make me fat, but whatchyou think I wanna be some skinny fool who never ate nothing good in all ‘is life?”
–”That’s zactly what they said bout DDT. Now look what the govment’s doin–bannin it here and makin more than ever to sell to all our winter fruits places like Costa Rica. Guess what yall, it comes right back to us when we buy our winter fruit.”
–”When ya don’t feed your cows what nature intended, when you give em all that cow meat and chicken manure, you mess em up. Everybody got so damn greedy tryin to make one cow the size a two and look what happened.”
–”I’m fine with the waste treatment plant comin to town. Won’t make too many jobs though, but this area needs one. At leas thats what they say. But we shouldn’t have none of that medical waste. God only knows how much water it takes to clean up diseases and medical things.”
I ate the best biscuits I’ve ever had and finished my meal, paid my bill ($3.45) and said good bye to the farmers. As I was walking out the door, one man called out to me.
“Now don’t forget–when ya git down yonna inda Mexico, ridin ain’t gonna be nuff. You betta learn howda run jus case someone yanks ya bike there!”
Everyone laughed and wished me safe travels.
