nighthawks at the diner

I maybe only make a couple of late night visits to a Waffle House a year, but it occurred to me during the other night’s tarriance at said establishment that everything—well, the rigid floor plan, décor, and juke box selection complete with a handful of odes to the Waffle House itself, of course, but also the chainsmoking and sad-faced, yet sweet-talking waitress, the tables of chainsmoking older regulars swilling coffee, younger folks in from the bars to soak up alcohol with eggs and bacon, and the eerily quiet and David Banner-like short order cook with the shifty eyes who all the waitresses fruitlessly flirt with even though they know this is the sort of man who probably has the remains of a hitchhiker or two in the crawlspace under the house, but at least he has a house—is exactly alike in a way that makes one begin to wonder if the front door is nothing more than a teleportation device to the very same greasy purgatory under sickly yellow lighting or culinary hell, depending on one’s standards—which are hard to come by at that time of night, culinarily speaking.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I should try this theory out at the interstate exit down from Casa Camino where a Waffle House sits on either side. One has to wonder what sort of dilemma this puts the regulars into. Obviously, they should stop at the one nearest them, but at some point during the hours of chainsmoking and coffee swilling they are each bound to turn a weathered face to the window and glance past those interstate lights in a gnawing wonder as to what’s taking place at that other Waffle House.

This wouldn’t happen if they subscribed to my teleportation device theory.