The Florence (South Carolina) Waffle House

Florence stands halfway between New York and Miami and, more importantly for me, halfway between Palm Bay and the D.C. area. I have stopped there many times on previous road trips, though I honestly don’t recall it being the hotbed of “culture” it has become. I recall when the biggest hotel in town had an outdoor swimming pool that looked like a petri dish (a rather different kind of culture), and the main dining choice was a fried chicken joint that evidently didn’t change the oil in their fryers very often.

Or maybe I was just getting off at the wrong exit. This trip we stayed at the Red Roof Inn ($44 per night, or $49 if you want the Business King room with high-speed Internet), across from a massive shopping mall where all the fashionable women wore spiky-heeled pumps made from exotic animal hides with impossibly sharp toes that made me wince just to watch them walk. Up and down the street were chain restaurants and hotels and motels and strip malls and . . . well, that’s about it.

Florence’s nicknames are “Flo-Town” and “The Magic City,” though I think the only magic is the influx of tourist dollars to a city that is mainly a way-station. The Wikipedia entry says, “This 1997 All-America City finalist, with its historic homes and medical center towers, came together to form a cultural center for the northeastern portion of South Carolina.” I don’t buy it. The only thing of any historic importance that I saw was clearly the Florence Waffle House, right behind the Red Roof Inn, where we ate on our way up to the funeral in Maryland. (I thought I had eaten at a Waffle House somewhere many years ago, though frankly I remember pancakes, not waffles, so maybe that was a Toddle House or a Huddle House rather than a Waffle House.)

My brother and I were greeted by Shirlee, a bubbly black woman whose warm smile and effusive demeanor lit up the room. She knew everyone in the place by name and favorite breakfast, and those she didn’t know, she treated like old friends and family. Even though Connie, the tall, thin woman with long flyaway hair and a crooked grin, had worked there for seventeen years (and her mother, whom we didn’t meet, had worked there for nineteen), Shirlee clearly ruled the roost. This was her place, and she was the perfect hostess. The crowd was an easy and comfortable mix of races and ages, some talkative, some happy to exchange pleasantries and then drink their coffee quietly. If I could eat there regularly without damaging my health (besides the deliciously cholesterol-laden food, many patrons smoked, as they apparently do in all South Carolina restaurants), I’d happily become a regular.

We were tempted to see what other Waffle Houses along the way were like. But we were afraid that the others would pale in comparison to Shirlee’s Waffle House. Besides, you never know when you’re going to encounter a wedding in progress, and I didn’t want to intrude. So we contented ourselves with a second breakfast there, on our way back south.

Shirlee asked for details about Mom’s funeral (remembering my mention of it on the way north), and was amazed and moved to hear that I officiated. She let me give her some healing energy to help short-circuit the cold she was developing (though I called it “a laying on of hands,” using the biblical language that she was more comfortable with), and she blessed me and called me her brother, then made me an All-Star Special™ Breakfast with over-easy eggs cooked perfectly.

Sitting next to me was Holly, the young waitress who, Shirlee noted, was constantly fending off advances from patrons young and old because she didn’t want her big bruiser of a boyfriend to beat up any more of her customers — “Once was enough!” After she finished her coffee break and her cigarette, Holly made a serving of “hash browns all the way” for Connie’s significant other, who had come in after dropping off Connie’s daughter at preschool. Available options for the hash browns are “scattered” (spread on the grill), “smothered” (with onions), “covered” (with cheese), “chunked” (with diced ham), “diced” (with diced tomatoes), “peppered” (with jalapeño peppers), “capped” (with mushrooms), “topped” (with chili), and “all the way” (with all available toppings). Connie told her to add a side of grits to the order, and to top it all with a biscuit and some sausage gravy, because he liked it best that way.

There was a fourth waitress there whose name I never caught, a roundish, laconic woman in her twenties who likewise smoked (but never did so behind the counter), and who called out welcoming words to customers as they arrived but without quite the zest or genuineness that Shirlee displayed. Maybe it was because she tended to mumble with that cigarette in her mouth. The four of them made a glorious tag team.

I’ll be heading north again to visit Jim in Norfolk at Christmas time. Any guesses as to where I’ll be having breakfast along the way?

Two Weddings and Two Funerals

I was emailing a friend this morning about the first funeral, and then the second funeral, but both times I typed “first wedding” and “second wedding”—only when I was proofreading did I catch my mistake. Certainly these ceremonies felt celebratory, not at all the lugubrious affairs that most funerals are; the second funeral had only close family and a couple of close friends in attendance, and all but one of us went out to an Italian restaurant together afterward. We laughed and reminisced for almost two and a half hours; the restaurant was good enough to give us a big table in their banquet room, so we could carry on by ourselves without being disturbed.

The family matriarch is now Mom’s sister, my Aunt Shirley, who at 84 is not in terrific health herself. But yesterday, though she was a little frail and unsure on her feet and her words no longer tumble crisply from her lips, her mind and her great wit were sharp and delicious. Her two children, my cousins Julie and Chris, are sharp-witted themselves, and their banter has always engaged the whole family. We all talk over one another constantly, and we talk too loudly because no one is really listening to one another and everyone wants to be heard, but enough gets through that we choke with laughter on our iced tea and drink our fill of the affection being flung to and fro.

Chris and I say we were switched at birth, because our mothers always seemed to call the other’s name before our own. In my case, when I was growing up, Mom would often shout, “Dale! Darryl! No, Chris! Wait—CRAIG!” when she was trying to get my attention at the other end of the house. I’d say, “I can understand you calling out my brothers’ names before you get to mine, but how did my cousin get in line before me?” Stranger still, I never lived in the same house as any of them; I was raised an only child. Once she actually called out the dog’s name before mine.

Chris has become his mother’s caregiver as I became mine. The two sisters would frequently compare notes over the phone about how wonderful their sons were, how lucky and blessed they felt.

My brother and I leave this morning to head back south. Two more days until I get my comfy bed back. Two more days of long drives. Two more days of every other conversation starting, “That reminds me of something Mom used to say. . . .”

Aunt Shirley never reminded that much of Mom. When they were together, it was all about contrasts. Shirley is deeply, vocally religious. Mom’s spirituality was strong, but very quiet and not always as orthodox as she pretended. Shirley is tall, Mom was short-ish. Shirley had a laugh that sounded like bells ringing, while Mom had a quiet little chuckle and a more sarcastic sense of humor. Both kept lovely homes, but it was Shirley who had all the elegant flair in entertaining, while Mom worried constantly about everything being in place, and whether everyone was comfortable—an approach I inherited.

But yesterday afternoon, after the second “wedding,” it was as if Mom were sitting there, speaking through my Aunt Shirley. Even my friend Jim remarked on it. It was a little uncanny, but quite wonderful. I’d have been crying if I hadn’t been laughing so hard the whole time.

I don’t believe I’ve ever felt so close to my family as I do now. My friends have always been my family, and my family have always been “relatives.” Family gatherings were never terribly comfortable for me; I always felt like an outsider, interested in things others weren’t, with different rhythms and sensibilities. Now it seems as if we’re all much more in sync, and it just feels amazing.

My friend Kate, who was also at the funeral, was in a horrific car accident a number of years ago; she was badly injured, and her fiancé was killed. After his death, she felt his presence keenly, and even likened his passing to a wedding of sorts, a union of their souls. Mom’s death feels similarly momentous, a joyful new time of life for us both. She feels alive again. And so do I.

Tasty, Tasty Poison

Bread and I are coming to a parting of the ways. I don’t know if I have a wheat allergy, or I’m sensitive to gluten, or if it’s those little yeasties that my system doesn’t like, but every time I binge on stuff made with flour, I pay dearly for it in the days and even weeks following.

I go in cycles. Sometimes I am scrupulously careful about my diet (not diet in the “lose weight” sense, though the proper diet certainly has that effect, but diet in the “eat what your body was evolutionarily designed to eat before the advent of agriculture screwed everything up and introduced us to new and wonderful diseases” sense). When I am in emotional survival mode, as I was for the last few weeks of Mom’s life, it all goes to pot and I eat bread and butter and chocolate and sugar and sometimes great hunks of meat.

This week I have been in celebration mode. That sounds terrible, considering I’m going to be officiating at Mom’s funeral in a few hours, but this trip really has been a celebration of her life. Everything reminds me of her. We went to Outback Steakhouse the night before last, and I ordered a lobster tail just because it was Mom’s favorite food in the world, but she rarely ordered it because lobster was too expensive and she felt she just wasn’t deserving enough to spend that kind of money on herself. (See, I come by that notion honestly!) I decided it was time to start saying Yes to little extravagances. Life is too short, and it was my way of saying, “Mom, you were indeed worthy, and so am I.”

Of course, while the lobster is properly paleo, the yummy bread that accompanied it wasn’t, nor was the beer, or the potatoes, or the Bloomin’ Onion. And last night’s Ledo’s pizza, that rectangular masterpiece of thin, flaky, pie-like crust and sweet-yet-spicy sauce, was about as far from paleo as it’s possible to get. So today, in Prince Frederick, Maryland, I am wheezing and my joints ache (the initial signs of what I call “bread poisoning”), and in a few days I will have a new outbreak of dermatitis herpetiformis on my hands and elbows. It goes away when I stop eating bread. It comes back when I do. I no longer what to play that game. I want to live life and move forward.

Starting Sunday.

And by the way, the bed here is every bit as hard as the one I slept on last night. Worse, the mattress is so smooth that the sheets slip off as I move around. If I were a quiet sleeper, it wouldn’t matter, but I’m a tosser-and-turner, so I have effectively already stripped the bed for the housekeeper.

Time for breakfast and a shower, then off to put the “fun” in funeral. (Shame the printed page doesn’t convey a sardonic tone of voice very well.)