Eggs and Sausage  But I Still Want a Burgundy

Editor’s Note: There was mild chaos left over today at Refuge Farm, with family sadness on the one hand, and five working parties of skilled and ebullient people laboring to bring order to the outbuildings and rationality to infrastructure: plumbing, electrical and HVAC. Stop me if you already heard enough about “infrastructure” these days. Another pal sent some images of the guys on Tinian Atoll in 1945, putting together two devices that would change the world. It is important history, but grim. As a relief, Marlow provides a more personal account from his “Four Corners” journey around our lovely and sometimes fractious nation. The saga was impressive even in the episodes he recorded at the time, but as an integrated tale, it is precious. More as it comes, but Marlow reminds us about what is real this morning…

-Vic

For the two decades I rode motorcycles on 700+ mile long days to see, feel, smell and touch places like the above, I had a partner who was a veritable Chippendale, who attracted thick and dark swarms of females of nefarious intent at gas stations, rest stops, and diners, while we prowled at high speeds America’s back country roads. We always ate at diners, drive-ins, and dives, while staying in more-than-garishly-neon-lit motels. Our source waters were the nation’s Capital city, where we considered ourselves pioneers of fine dining palettes.

When there, we wined, dined, sipped, glugged, and slurped in some of the most demonstrably epic bistros in the District of Columbia. We ate strange looking flesh of dodgy wild land mammals and sea monsters, unbelievable veal cutlets à la française with glasses of French Burgundy that blinded us with their excellence.

At back road city cafes, it was breaded Salisbury steak, maybe if we were lucky in Shake-n-Bake with Velveeta sauce and half-n-half.

Sometimes our tummies volcano’d after an entrée smothered in what the menu claimed was Campbell’s tomato soup-based sauce.

We learned to only trust the rare waitress who wore rhinestone glasses for the real down low on what was what on the menu, since we wanted to avoid entrées that would come down and try to beat the shit out of our morning cups of coffee that wouldn’t be strong enough to defend themselves.

Here’s a brief remembrance of those places which we visited and in which we dined:

We ate with the nighthawks at an Arizona diner
On a Flagstaff backstreet they called the 49er
No dark hour rendezvous of strange gypsy hacks
Sharing dessert bottles of brown liquid like insomniacs
The day’s papers been read
So, they one and all said
They were burning in trash cans
Over which we warmed our chilled hands

Every morning CnD ate eggs, sausage, a side of toast
A roll, hash browns over easy, and a coffee, dark roast
Me? Some chili in a bowl, maybe a pork slider and fries
Always asked the waitress what’d the cook bake for today’s pies

Never no graveyard charade, no early or late post meal masquerade
We fed jukeboxes 3 for a quarter, one for a dime
Sometime when our bills the register ringed
We’d hear last nite’s echoes of what the counter waitress singed

Small town papers offered no daily directions
These places offered hot caffeine in a nicotine clouds
When they’re absent, we still miss the touch of our beloved one’s fingers
A burning pulsing longing for them still lingers
They’ll never be 86ed from our current schemes
We’re still lovers of simple domestic nocturnal scenes

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