Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the more common questions people asked me was, “while you were passing through such-and-such town, did you eat at such-and-such’s restaurant?” About 90% of the time, my answer was, “no.”

I had a lot of great meals while taking a walk. Alas, there is only so much food a person can eat in a day, and in America we are blessed with much more than our capacity to eat.

There were three big reasons for the “no” answer. (1) The restaurant was not on Route 11. I didn’t stray far from Route 11 during the day, so if it wasn’t right in my path, I missed it. (2) I passed the restaurant at a time other than a meal time. (3) See above, there was only so much I could eat in a day.

So, here were the main great meals that I didn’t eat.

(1) Barbeque. I have no count of how many barbeque places I passed on the six southern states while taking a walk. I am only writing about the real, slow-cook, bareque places. I am not counting the places with the “bar-b-q” sign out front where they grill food quickly (not that there is anything wrong with that type of food). I usually passed these places early in the morning. They had a big smoker outside of the building or hut or shack or whatever type of structure they used for their counter and cash register. Smoke would be drifting up out of the smoker with that smell. That smell that ignited my lunch-time digestive system three or four hours before lunch. Oh, how I hated that feeling. They weren’t selling any food yet; they weren’t going to sell any food for several hours, but there they were smoking away and torturing people like me who happened to pass. I guess if you drove by in a car with your windows up you wouldn’t smell it. Those lucky people in the cars. They were safe.

(2) Hot dogs. I love hot dogs; I have always loved hot dogs. Perhaps that is a birth defect of some kind, but that is the way it is with me. Every gas station in America has one of those little machines with the hot rollers and hot dog weiners slowly turning on them. Gas stops, coffee stops, bathroom stops – common reasons for stepping inside a gas station brought the sight and odor of the cooking hot dog. Rats. Hot dogs have a bit too much fat and too many calories to be eating them three or four times a day. Rats again. This was torture to a hot dog lover like me. I am sure that lovers of fine barbecue will gasp at the thought of putting hot dogs right next to barbecue in a discussion of great food. Too bad. It fits for me.

(3) Fried anything. There is something about the smell of frying food in the south. Fried chicken is in every little town. Fried fish is in almost every little town – especially in the catfish farming areas of Alabama and Mississippi. The smell churns the stomach as much as that of slow-cooked barbecue. The reason for missing these fried meals is the same as for the barbeque: just too much of it and often at the wrong time of day.