Yesterday, I was in Rock Hill on a video shoot for a client of ADCO.
When we had some time to break for lunch, Brian and I asked about where we might go eat where yours truly could find something I’m not allergic to. My best way of describing that sort of venue is “a meat and two veg place” — as opposed to a pizza place or a sandwich place, which have nothing on their menus for me. Basically, I need to go to a place that serves food like Mama used to make.
So we were sent to an old-school, down-home joint in an unremarkable strip shopping center. It seemed that Fate was against our ever getting there, as Google Maps steered us completely wrong for awhile.
But Fate was just messing with us, just putting off the big reveal.
Earlier in the day, as we were pulling into town, I had thought to myself, “I know I was here during the campaign, but when, and what sort of event was it?” I couldn’t remember.
Now at lunchtime, as we finally turned into the shopping center parking lot and rolled past the Earth Fare that is sort of the anchor tenant, the lights came on and I said, “Oh. I know where we are.”
After we ordered our food (for me, a hamburger steak with fries and some speckled butter beans — with me, the plainer the fare the better), I stepped into the private meeting room toward the back and took the above picture.
Then I sent it to James and Mandy along with the picture below, saying, “Having lunch at The Little Cafe in Rock Hill, and having flashbacks.”
The below picture was taken at 9:22 a.m. on Oct. 31, the second day of the Saga of the “Bus,” the “Leave No One Behind Tour.”
We zipped in and out of these places so fast that they’re hard to recall now — until Fate decides to mess with me, dropping me into a place apparently at random and then saying, “Remember this?”
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you’re trying to normalize gluttony(try Carolina Buffet on Platt Springs Rd)…
https://dwightyoakam.bandcamp.com/track/the-back-of-your-hand
On that score, my first thought when we arrived at the place and I remembered the breakfast we had there back in October, I remembered one thing about that breakfast:
They had fatback.
It wasn’t the best fatback I’d ever had. It had a bit too much hard rind and not enough fat. But fatback it was. And the first thing I did upon arrival yesterday, after seeing the sign up front saying that they did breakfast all day, was to walk back to the buffet to see if there was fatback.
There was not.
It’s really a shame that so few eateries have fatback these days, because I wasted my youth.
My grandmother used to cook it and put it on the table, because my mother’s older brother loved it. But I thought it was revolting. You understand, I was such a stupid kid that I thought the good part of bacon was the lean part. Fat was something I avoided, and when my Dad would go, “You didn’t eat the best part!” and eat it himself, I thought it was gross.
Kids are like Jon Snow. They know nothing…
I realize these things probably aren’t that interesting to y’all, but they are to me.
It seems — weird — to me that I was never in a place in my entire life, and then suddenly I find myself plopped down in the same out-of-the-way eatery within a few months. Neither time did I make a decision to go there. Both times, someone else chose the destination.
And there I was again. It’s something that almost certainly has no significance whatsoever, and yet it FEELS as though it does. Know what I mean?
By the way, this happened before about a month or two ago. I went to an event in Greenville on … let’s see… March 2. I didn’t know where the event was to be held. It was an event my sister-in-law helped organize. We went to my brother’s house, and HE took us to the event.
And it was in the exact same venue as a major fundraiser from the campaign, one that was freighted with significance at the time because it was our first campaign event after putting the campaign on hiatus for the hurricane. I had never in my life been there before that, had never heard of the place before that, and then BINGO, here I was there again.
Which felt weird….
Fatback and pole beans or polk sallet;loved that but was afraid to the point of nightmares about the gallon jar of pigs feet sitting next to the lard…
Youth is wasted on the young and then old age is the most surprising thing that can happen to a man…
Happy International Jazz Day!
https://resumrecordings.bandcamp.com/track/pithecanthropus-erectus