It was 12:21 a.m. There were no restaurants open in Fairhope at this untoward hour.
Unless, of course, you counted Sonic Drive-In. And if I wanted the joyous experience of dining in my vehicle, I could save time by dumping boiling grease into my lap.
So it was Waffle House.
I stepped into the surgically chilled air of America’s greatest eatery and found my usual seat.
Waffle House dining rooms are predominantly designed the same way. A Waffle House in Benson, North Carolina, for example, is set up just like the one in Albuquerque.
So I always choose the same seat. I always select the leftmost seat at the very end of the bar. Back of the house. Nearest the refrigerators. Against the window.
I sit here for two reasons. One, because the air conditioners at Waffle House will freeze your vital organs. Two, the air vents can’t reach you back here.
Tonight, our grill-person was named Larry. He was tall, with Rosie Greer shoulders and a perpetual smile.
I asked what he was smiling about.
“Oh, I always smile,”
he said.
I asked why.
He shrugged his granite shoulders. “Customers need to feel like they’s at home.”
Larry is a relatively young guy. At least he seems young to me.
He recently suffered a heart attack. The cardiac event was so bad that his doctors weren’t sure how much destruction had been done. They placed him in a medically induced coma to reduce damage to his brain.
Life came to a standstill. His family went into a kind of half mourning. If you’ve ever had a family member in a coma, it’s exactly like going to hell, only with more vending machine food.
Larry survived his heart attack with almost no lingering effects. One week after he left the hospital, he was back at the grill, cooking.
“Cooking is what I do,” he said, flipping eggs with a gentle…