Reflections Part Two

When given the choice, I'll always pick a locally-owned establishment over a chain restaurant. This has led to more than a few food-poisoning incidents, but the positives always outweigh stomach worms.

Take this gem of an experience. Next time you're whizzing through Tennessee, trying to handle annoying children and a husband whose way too intimate with his pocket PC - duck into Emma's for day-old eggs and watered-down maple syrup.



If you're lucky, some choice conversations will occur with regulars and wait staff who insist on sharing tidbits from last Sunday's sermon. Seems the local preacher's views on evolution were most enlightening. I believe Dwayne put it best when he summed up the general consensus in one sentence: "We didn't come from no zoo." I asked him to elaborate, but he had a lawn to mow. Dwayne, wearing a red shirt that announced Victory in Jesus, left me with the following words of wisdom,

"The only ones who don't have the knowledge are either pawns or don't know no better. They wanna trust the apes over God."

Customers buzzed with intellectual intercourse that would make professors at MIT jealous. Our waitress, however, was noticeably silent. When pressed, Elaine admitted that she was under strict orders from Daddy not to talk about Darwin. At the end of our meal, she needed help adding $2.75 to a $6.50 tab. Elaine had enough to worry about without adding biology topics into the mix.

And get a load of the back of Emma's kids' menu:

My boys took one look at the game and busted out with rhymes from one of our favorite Beastie Boys songs. This outburst caused the entire restaurant, including several gentlemen with missing teeth, to stare as if we were the odd ones. Maybe we were.

"If I had a penny for my thoughts I'd be a millionaire."

See? You can't get that at Cracker Barrel.