Waffle House is open 24/7/365. No exceptions. Waffle House will keep serving when the South falls again. Waffle House will be open when Chick-Fil-A gets raptured. Waffle House has a dedication that makes the Marines look like amateurs. At Waffle House you can get your hashbrowns:
Smothered
Covered
Chunked
Diced
Peppered
Capped
Topped
Country
&
All The Way
I haven’t tried them all, but I’ve tried a couple.
I. Smothered & Covered: Lincolnton, NC
I was maybe fourteen, sitting with my Dad in a booth in my hometown. Behind us, a woman was yelling at her friend.
“I told her ‘he’s thirty-seven, you’re seventeen, good luck honey, he’s just gonna leave you for someone younger.’”
The next time we were there together, the waitress and a guy from out in the county were talking.
“How’s your day goin?” he asks.
“Oh not too good, I was backing out of the driveway on my way over here and I ran over my little dawg. It was just pitiful, you know. My husband had to shoot him.”
The last time I remember going to Waffle House with my Dad, we were there with my little brother because my Mom was out of town. I think we ate Waffle House four nights that week. It was the miserable time of the Carolina winter where it dumps rain and the days are still short. The world felt like hunger. The only other people in the restaurant were a couple and their young son. He kept running back and forth to the jukebox, putting on songs, dancing. He was husky, and he was swinging his hips like late-career Elvis. The kid was born to be a star. Finally, he put “Let’s Get It On” on the box and, as we all avoided eye contact for three-odd minutes, entered a world of soul only available to the motown greats and chubby white kids, and the world felt less hollow.
II. Diced: Harrisonburg, Virginia
I met Cary for the first time at her house in Harrisonburg. I was two hours late because I didn’t have a car, and my ride to town got lost during Army ROTC training. We went to lunch at Waffle House. The waitress told us about Jesus, her grandbabies, and overcoming meth. After lunch, Cary had work until eleven at the nicest restaurant in town, which, surprisingly, wasn’t Waffle House. I had homework, so I posted up at the library to knock it out. The library closed at nine, and I got kicked out, so I relocated to Starbucks, which closed at eleven. Eleven came. No word from Cary. I was 20 and couldn’t get into the bars. Everywhere else was closed. Wintry mix was spitting down outside. I only had one place to go.
I downed cup after cup of coffee and ate two eggs and hashbrowns. I called my ride. His girlfriend told me he was asleep. I called Tony, who was partying in town. Tony didn’t pick up, because Tony’s a dick. I chatted with another waitress about nothing and watched the drunk crowd trickle in. Two old folks with their grandbaby walked in at two. I was resigned to the fact that I would stay there until dawn. At three, Cary asked me where I was. I told her. She drove over and I met her outside. She’d been caught up at work, she told me: private party, phone died, closing bullshit. I’d had about ten cups of coffee, and I sat in her passenger seat bugging out as we drove back to her house. There wasn’t a second date. I’ll always regret not staying at that Waffle House.
III. Chopped: Southwest Virginia
My roommates, friends, and I usually crammed into a booth on Sunday morning, feeling less than holy. Somebody always brought up the time that some guy tried to pay my roommate Jim to have sex with his wife on camera in a Waffle House bathroom. It was actually an IHOP, because Waffle House is a family establishment, but the story sounds better when you say it happened there.
IV. Peppered: Southwest Virginia, Again
The summer after I graduated, I met one of my professors at Waffle House. He gave me a notebook to take with me when I left for the next chapter of my life. He told me to write in it. I filled it with attempted budgets, workout logs, and to-do lists. The literature of life, some might say, but they’d be wrong. I just wasted a nice notebook.
V. All the Way: Southwest Virginia, the Last Time
The first time I met Anne she was wearing bandages around her arms because she had poison ivy real bad. I didn’t care. She said it made her look meth-head pretty. We rolled around the backroads of the national forest and talked about the summer camp and flower farm where she used to work. Her dead chicken named Boob. Weird Southern childhood memories. She bought 40s and we drank them while cruising. We listened to Rick Ross, who was hospitalized at the time, and Townes Van Zandt. We desecrated a Baptist church parking lot and I ripped my pants down the crotch. At the end of the night, too hungry to give a shit, we hit up the only place open at five. I almost fell asleep in my steak & eggs, and then she dropped me off and headed back home over the mountain. It was the first of many trips.
I can only think of one other Waffle House memory with her. Near the end, hungover after her friend’s birthday party in northern Virginia. Laughing at the table with them all, then riding back south with her through the fog, knowing it was all coming to a close and it wouldn’t be good for either of us. I have a lot of other memories of non-chain diners with her, from New Orleans to DC. But I don’t really want to think about those, and this essay was about Waffle House.
Sy Holmes is a writer from western North Carolina. He lives in central Montana with other people’s dogs.
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