• If Mary’s diner had been serving booze, it might have been called a honky tonk. It had that unkempt, dive-like look about it. The peeling red paint and sagging steps spoke of seediness and neglect, but the number of cars and semis in the parking lot promised good eats.
    Inside it was clean as a whistle, the warm aromas of bacon and coffee nearly making Pavlov’s dog of him. And it was bustling. He’d had to wait a few minutes before a trucker gave up the end seat at the counter.
    Impatient because he was hungry after his night’s work, he hoped it wouldn’t take forever to get served. He opened the newspaper the trucker had left figuring to kill time and close himself off, avoiding conversation.
    It wasn’t long before he heard the cigarette raspy “Hiya, hon” from the generously lipsticked waitress. “What can I getcha?”
    Pen poised over her order pad, she was snapping her gum, totally oblivious to the fact that she was a living parody of every stereotype there ever was of a diner waitress. He drank in her persona, completely enjoying the show.
    “I’ll take the number four over easy with coffee. You got any more gum?”
    “Sure I do, sugar.” She smiled broadly handing him a stick of Juicy Fruit, completely missing the irony.
    “Thanks…I’ll save it for later,” he said, pocketing it with a grin that she mistook as genuine. He watched her twitch off and clip his ticket to the order wheel, shook his head in amusement and returned to his newspaper. He read about the ailing economy and checked the baseball scores while he waited.
    “Here ya go, hon.” She plunked the huge plate between his scarred and callused hands. “Anything else I can bring ya? Ketchup? Tabasco sauce?”
    “Thanks, no. I think I’m good here.”
    His ham was golden, and his yolks were hot but runny, just the way he liked them, and he wondered not for the first time, why a cheesy diner could always get them just right, but a pricier restaurant would often as not present them either lukewarm and snotty, or hard as rocks. “You don’t always get what you pay for.” he mused.
    He made short work of breakfast, left a tip on the counter and ambled to the cash register with his bill.
    His boots scuffed the floor, and in a world where most everyone either was, or fancied himself a cowboy, his plain little spurs with the simple silver work went unnoticed. Had anyone looked at them at all, they might have seen that they were handmade and not store bought. In this part of the country no one gave anyone’s spurs a glance unless they were absolutely huge. Then they just figured you for a dude.

    Waiting his turn to pay he grabbed a toothpick out of the cup on the counter and thought with satisfaction that his night of work had gone better than he thought it might.

    Mary herself interrupted his reverie.

    “Everything all right?” Offering her beefy hand for his bill.
    Her royal blue apron was adorned with large white curly cue letters that said “I’m Mary and I own this greasy spoon”. It looked so incongruous on her yard wide body that for a fleeting moment he wanted to comment on the absurdity of it.


    “Yep”, just fine, thanks”

    He held his tongue and handed her a ten. She punched the old round keys, the drawer opened, and the cash register cha-ching-ed with a nostalgic sound slowly disappearing from American life.

    “Thanks for coming in. Hope to see you again,” Mary smiled passing him his change.

    “You never know,” he answered over his shoulder.

    He walked to his dusty, beat up pickup, noting with satisfaction that it fit right in with all the others parked in the lot. He climbed in, turned over the engine and shifted into drive, pulling slowly out of the lot and back onto the frontage road. He was in no kind of a hurry. His business here was finished and he could take his time getting home. His father had always picked at him for doing everything so deliberately---derisively called him “Single Speed”. “Nothing’s changed, Pop” he thought. “I’m still doing things exactly the way I want to, and at my own pace.”

    Driving down the frontage road he smiled to himself, watching the semis and cars on the interstate whiz past at breakneck speed. “Texas…….everybody drives like maniacs.” he thought.
    Near Midland he eased onto the interstate, and drove 150 miles east, squinting against the sunrise before pulling into a tree shaded rest stop for a much needed two hour nap. Later, at a seedy used car lot just outside Abilene he traded the truck for a five year old Ford mini van. He tried to beat the salesman down a few hundred dollars on the deal without success.

    “Listen, sir, I don’t really want your truck” the salesman said. “With gas over four dollars a gallon most everywhere, nobody wants to take in any more trucks or SUV’s these days. Take a look around—my lot’s chock full with trucks that I can’t sell. God only knows what I’m going to do with them all if this damned economy doesn’t turn around and the price of gas doesn’t get reasonable again soon.”

    He quit arguing, paid the difference in cash, and shut up, not wanting to be remembered.

    The minivan had been used hard and put away wet but he didn’t care. He was good with his hands and when he got it home he would work his magic on the engine. It would eventually hum like a temple of Buddhist monks in pursuit of nirvana.

    Heading north, now, he couldn’t wait to get home. It was two days to the weekend and Jillie. God, how he missed that kid.