Thanksgiving 2008 has come and gone. For my wife and I it was a marathon trip from Boone, North Carolina, to Rome, Georgia, and back in 72 hours. You could say that we are getting beyond our prime for these long car trips. Bathrooms and the need to stretch creaking knees get in the way of long stretches between fillups. So, our travels have taken on a less hectic and more leisurely pace.
Saturday morning, after driving from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. on Friday, I attended my weekly Bible study and in the discourse made the point that Heaven must be like A&W Rootbeer stands. I don't know of any in North Carolina, but it seems Tennessee and northern Georgia are filled with them. So, if you love the frosted mugs and the supercooled elixir as do my wife and I, then those A&W stands are like Heaven. They are far away and hard to reach, but oh so worth the journey to get there.
Of course one of our more well-off retirees made the point that he didn't think A&W was Heaven. In fact, he thought more of the other place since he had invested a lot in the stock and had evidently lost much of his investment. Well, I guess I should have told him that faith required patience; but I let it pass.
On our trip back from my wife's mother and her third husband's place, we stopped in a small town in Tennessee called Ocoee at a Huddle House Restaurant. It was there we both ventured on flights of imagination. Cynthia, of course, took the more romatic path while I, as a journalist trained to observe, took the more practical path.
Our waitress, for lack of a better description, had the fading beauty of a Playboy Bunny, and that's where my wife went. She envisioned this aging beauty as one who had left for the bright lights of the world only to be bruised and sent back home broken but defiant. I, on the other had, first noticed she was not wearing a regulation T-shirt as were the other waitresses, or the cook. That said to me that perhaps she was the day manager or, possibly, the franchise owner for Ocoee.
Now, the truth is probably nothing at all like our mindless wanderings as we left Ocoee and headed toward Maryville, Severville, North Carolina and home. Our beautiful, friendly waitress was probably just that, a hometown girl grown up with children, a husband working in the local whatever plant, and both attending the local Baptist church on Sunday mornings. Take your pick, but if you ever are passing through Ocoee on Highway 411, stop at the Huddle House and enjoy an order of bacon, overeasy eggs, hashbrowns, toast and coffee. It's a clean, friendly place to break your travels.
