Maryland. The old cafe is mostly empty this time of night. Music plays overhead. Pedal steel guitar.
The cook is cleaning his flattop. The waitress is reading a magazine. Thank God magazines still exist in our AI Age.
I smell cured pork and onions. There are globe lamps hanging over the bar. Half of my American youth happened in places like this. The only thing missing is the smoking section.
I sit at the counter. My waitress is named Sharon. I know this because it’s on her name tag. She speaks Alabamian. I can hear it in her voice:
“You doin’?”
“Good,” I say. “You?”
“Better’n I d’serve. Choo drinkin’?”
“Coffee, please.”
She gets out a pen and pad. Thank God pens and pads still exist.
“Knowcha want, sweetie?”
“Two eggs. Bacon. Hash browns.”
“White’r wheat?”
“White.”
“‘Bout them eggs?”
“Sunny.”
“‘Thing else?”
“You got any chocolate milk?”
Smile. “You sound like my four-year-old.”
I’ve been on the road for days, performing my one-man spasm before audiences. It’s been fun, but I miss home.
I stay on the road for a living. Sometimes you get homesick. Last night, for example, I got out of bed to use the restroom and walked face first into my hotel room wall.
But it’s the little things that keep you grounded. Familiar food. Pedal steel guitars. And a familiar accent.
My food arrives.
“Your accent,” I say to my waitress. “Where’re you from?”
“Close to Troy.”
People from small towns almost never tell you the name of their town first. They always start with the nearest big city and work their way inward.
“Where around Troy?”
“Brundidge.”
“Pike County.”
She smiles. “Shut up. You know it?”
“How long you been gone?”
Her face is still wearing a smile, but it’s the kind of smile that contradicts itself. “Long time,” she says. “Where you from?”
“Birmingham.”
“How you know Brundidge?”
“I thought everyone knew about the Peanut Butter Festival.”
Smile. “Guess you learn something new er’ day.”
We converse throughout my meal. I can see the cook eavesdropping on our discussion. He’s intrigued. Probably because we are speaking a foreign tongue.
“People make fun of me ‘cause I’m from Alabama,” she says. “Up here they assume I’m stupid ‘cause the way I talk. They think all folks from Alabama’s dumb. Half the time, they act surprised I’m even wearing shoes.”
Now it’s my turn to smile. “Preach.”
“But we ain’t stupid. This just how we talk. They don’t like the way we talk, they can just…”
I’ll omit the latter half of her sentence, which is an expressly Alabamian phrase involving a famous orifice.
I pay for my meal. I leave a tip. The waitress and I hug before I leave. I don’t normally hug my waitresses. But I do in Maryland.
Mid-hug, our cook speaks. “Funny thing about Alabama…” he begins.
The waitress and I release each other.
“In Huntsville,” the cook explains, “they have more engineers per capita than any state in the nation. Alabama has more engineers than Silicon Valley, or New York and LA combined.”
The waitress just looks at him. “So?”
“So,” he says, “that means that Alabama, statistically speaking, is the smartest state in the entire United States.”
You learn something new er’ day.
Sean Dietrich is a humorist and stand-up storyteller known for his commentary on life in the American South. His column appears weekly in newspapers throughout the U.S. He has authored 18 books and makes appearances on the Grand Ole Opry.
