05 July 2010
 
Breakfast with Gladys

I had one of those amazing weekends, and I hope you did, too. It was an intensely introspective holiday, and I read the Declaration of the Founders with a weather eye to the future and I labored on some stuff from the office that could be done while still in motion.
 
Behind it all, something remarkable was happening. One thing after another; the events connected starting on Friday. The slow-cooked brisket worked out just right, and proved to be a crowd pleaser for some the usual suspects in an impromptu pot luck. Why I had the dish available was complete serendipity; I was just trying to clear out the freezer.
 
The Prince of Serendip did not stop with that. In short order, he arranged the most glorious of skies, and the most brilliant of the sun’s rays. Traffic on the long ribbon of asphalt to the farm light in both directions; all the chores were done, the trees felled properly and the wreckage deposited there by the sale of the little condo was all squared away.
 
The night was soft and the sound of the trains passing the crossings in the distance was soothing. The satellite radio produced a hours of alternate cuts that moved the blood and I cranked it up, something I can’t do at Big Pink. Sleep, when it came, was deep and profound.
 
Work still loomed back home, but I decided to treat myself to a stop at the Frost Diner in downtown Culpeper on the way back as a reward. It was a crap shoot, of course, since  small towns are quirky, and the place might be closed for the Holiday. Instead, the place was very much open for business, a parking place for the Hubrismobile was available out front, and along the main street was an exhibition of classic hot rods and antique cars.
 
Good God, I thought, I could not have planned something more appealing if I had researched it for months, and there it was, at my feet unbidden.
 
Being an antique and a car guy myself, there was nothing better than to wander down three blocks of fabulous Detroit ironware and gaze at hundreds of autos, customized in fantastic colors and chopped, channeled and sectioned like Tom Wolf’s Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.

(Culpeper Daily Driver)
 
I share the love affair with the open road and the V-8 that all the generations of the 20th Century do, even as I know that it is passing away with Peak Oil and dirty tar spreading along the formerly sugar-white beaches of the Gulf. The paint on the cars reflected life, even as I gazed at the Reaper standing next to the custom hot-rod hearse at the corner of Davis and East Street, just a hundred feet from the Episcopal Church where Jeb Stuart worshipped the winter he spent here.

(The Reaper’s ride. Photo Socotra)
 
I was overwhelmed by the selection of autos on display. There was no theme, except that this part of rural Virginia seemed to have a fondness for the Chevelle Super Sport, 1966-73, and the Vette, and venerable variations on the Hot Rod theme popularized by ZZ Top.

(Cherry Chevell SS Super Sport. Photo Socotra)
 
There was a stool open at Frost’s after I wandered the streets and I plopped down directly in back of Sharon, the stout and energetic short order cook who was working through an endless series of green order chits clipped to a stainless rack over her left shoulder. The wait was significant due to the crowd that packed the booths and lined the counter but I did not mind. Her smooth and economical motion, flying from the white eggs stacked in large boxes like ammunition to the bacon, sausage, and corned beef hash that slid from refer to grill and onto long oblong white plates to be distributed to the throng in the diner. The conversation hummed like a hundred vuvuzelas.
 
I had ordered the western omelet and grits with an English muffin, and watched my order advance with military precision toward the action position. The stool adjacent cleared and a white-haired woman named Gladys sat down next to me.
 
Will Rogers observed one time that the only stranger he knew was one he hadn’t met, and Gladys quickly demonstrated that we must have known each other, like, forever.
 
She announced that she was from Mitchells, or some little village down to the south, but was in the big city of Culpeper so often that she might as well move here. The three acres of landscaping was getting to be too much to keep up, and the hot spell made even the watering a chore.
 
She knew Sharon, and Trixie and Joan the waitresses, and soon enough we were all family there at the counter. Gladys knew a secret to the service: she ordered the biscuit and gravy, “Half order,” she said. “The full is just too much food for me.” She patted he ample tummy. “When I was younger I couldn’t keep the weight on, and now I just look at the food and I put it on.”
 
She sighed, but Trixie was able to round up her half order lickety split, since it did not contain any of the eggs that Sharon was cracking with constant motion and swirling up in a stainless bowl to the left of the grill. She did a bit more than just look at the food, I discovered.
 
When her order was plopped down in front of her, I marveled at it. Apparently a single hefty country biscuit, lopped in half, was under there someplace, buried in a mound of viscous white gravy a full four inches tall.

(Biscuits and gravy a la Sharon.)
 
“Looks good,” I said cautiously.
 
“My husband likes the sausage gravy,” Gladys said primly. “But I don’t abide all that fat in the morning.”
 
I shook my head in agreement. “Did you have a chance to look at the cars?” I asked.
 
“No, I didn’t bring my cane and the arthritis will make that a real hike for me. But I sure like the show. Except for the Corvettes. I always thought they were too low and too small.” She shook her head disapprovingly.

(‘Vettes at the Depot. Photo Socotra)
 
“They drive like tanks,” I said, “at least the ones from the sixties.” Privately, I like the sporty beasts, though it didn’t seem neighborly to disagree with anything there at Frost’s.
 
“We always liked Lincolns,” declared Gladys. “Even the Cadillacs we looked at just don’t ride so well.”
 
I thought that if her husband had the biscuit and sausage gravy full order with any regularity, the suspension on the stately Lincoln would be just what the doctor ordered.
 
Trixie filled my coffee again and eventually the platter of omelet and grits appeared at the end of her arm. She brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. “Gotta start settin’ up lunch pretty soon,” she said. Behind her Sharon went on cracking eggs and suddenly broke her concentration. “We are going to move some 6-oz patties today, you better believe it!”
 
I took a fork full of egg and cheese and savored it. Breakfast at Frost’s is about as good as it gets.
 
Gladys was done with the mound of gravy about the time I was, and we paid up at the register at the street end of the long counter.
 
“You don’t often get a floor show with breakfast,” I said. “This was fantastic.”
 
“You should have seen the fireworks in the park on Saturday night,” she said. “Of course they didn’t want to have a display on Sunday, even if it is the 4th.”
 
“Of course,” I said, realizing the Sabbath still has power in Culpeper County. I waved as Gladys limped toward the long line of hot rods parked in front of the old storefronts.
 
I climbed into the Hubrismobile, happy to have an open road in front of me and plenty of tunes on the radio. I fired up the German V-8 and turned up the volume. It might be the last V-8 I will ever own, but it is a hell of an engine that comes out of the plant in Bremen.
 
I can’t get National Public Radio down here, since the reception from the capital is lousy. I had flipped up the spectrum at random to a rock n’ roll station in Winchester.
 
“You pick the music on the WMUZ all-request weekend!” shouted the DZ.
 
I put the car in gear and waited for traffic to clear down Main Street. I thought I would like to hear Cold Play do “Viva la Vida,” and I will be hornswoggled if that is not exactly what came on.
 
It was that sort of weekend. No shit.
 
It wasn’t until I got home that I found the homework assignment, which involves amending the Constitution, but we will have to get to that tomorrow.

(Ms Boop and the Chevy with Lake Pipes and drive-in tray. Photo Socotra)

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Subscribe to the RSS feed!