Heavy metal for breakfast with a side of banging plates.
A 50-ish brassy blonde blurts out orders with the ire of a marine drill sergeant. Cooking oil creates it’s 70th pair of “over easy.”
“Mother” and “Grateful” inked on the arms of servers, grits bleeding with whipped spread. Beards everywhere.
A waitress named Shirley Boo.
A Waffle House Star Employee, her shirtwaist blouse adorning a plastic gold star pin, proof of excellence in preparing and serving, proudly worn. A career girl. The long crevices on her pale cheeks verify her seniority. A character easily taken as a Deplorable by dismissive movers and shakers living just an hour away in our culture canceling nation’s capital. Shirley pays no mind. Out here, past the mountain that delays the Federal sprawl of Washington and protects the moneyed hours farms and vineyards, Shirley’s daily routine has no time for boomer resentment or folks who wouldn’t be caught within a mile of this place.
Shirley greets her customers like she’s known them forever. She has an opinion, maybe one or two that are questionable, but her service to the simple culinary desires of hundreds of customers awards her license to speak her peace. “After all, this is America, right?” she proclaims as she tosses her plate with just the right trajectory to land under the chin of a hungry customer.
The white enameled tiles of a once sparkling kitchen are clouded by layers of grease collecting dust from hundreds of successful “Lumberjack Favorite” deliveries. A Formica counter is worn by the endless traffic of gliding plates and sliding steel silverware wearing down the original design of glittered grey and white squares, now faded.
The clatter and frenzy of fifteen orders in the making, done in full view if you choose to sit at the counter, lie in varying degrees of completion over plates balanced on a wooden work shelf bowed by years of use. Mounds of shredded potato are taking on a crusty finish inches from plates that now have received scrambled, fried, or poached egg orders. The shelf is just deep enough to hold the plate. No room here for misunderstandings or ambiance. The blonde and brassy floor manager sees to that. Every inch a prep area. An arm’s length away, sizzling disks of meat applaud and spew bubbles of popping oil far enough to glaze dry, blackened bacon strips, cooked and piled into the corner waiting to be plucked and dumped into a plate already occupied by two fried eggs over-medium.
One more pit stop to fill the last uncovered portion of plate with a steaming ball of grits. Protein and carb shoehorned into a pasty consistency easily consumable by a single spoon. And right next to it, a coffered disk of fried buttermilk and flour holding reservoirs of maple syrup. The energy of the place is astounding. The urgency is reassuring, making one feel there is nothing more crucial than the here-and-now of breakfast-making.
A place where everyone knows your name. But this is not a trendy Boston watering hole with cool and quirky characters located on a quaint, friendly street dotted with parked BMWs. This is a place that bears a stark reality no sitcom could come close to imitating.
It’s pickup truckers, cash-poor college freshman, minivans that pop out six kids, mothers, fathers, and sedentary characters pushing their BMI index. One supersize fits all at this yellow box sitting off a six-lane state route between an historic city holding its own and a breathtaking mountain range.
Tim McGraw replaces Mega Death without introduction, like a summer Florida thunderstorm throwing its last bucket to finally quench the noise in hopes of hearing something softer, less dystopian. The change elevates the talk at tables from murmur to chatter, syncopated by condiments being slammed down after being squeezed, shaken, and poured on steaming piles of a breakfast special.
There is no menu cutoff to breakfast at the House. Eggs, bacon, sausage, potato, and pancakes conspire to lure satisfaction from the appetites of the morning, all day, 24-7, proving that America runs on more than a promotional doughnut ad campaign.
This is the unabashed, flag waving outpost of the quintessential greasy spoon, set in a midcentury, roadside time warp serving locals who still greet strangers and hold doors open for the folks behind them.
This is a group less concerned about the S&P 500 than the oil leak in their 15-year-old Dodge Ram. It’s another world from the Audi’s and Mercedes of Reston and Ashburn.
Cargo still rolls over the Winchester and Potomac rails, a route once captured by Union and Confederate forces repeatedly; its horn majestically warning to make way, even if it is only a two-car train now, carrying apples and lumber.
If the trend continues, condo owners will replace farmers and the W&PO right of way will become a rail trail occupied by folks who run, but don’t talk.
And Shirley Boo will be no more.
John spent a management career in the theatre on Broadway, at Radio City Music Hall, and on tour. He holds an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University. His articles have appeared in Adelaide Magazine, Poor Yorick Journal, the San Antonio Review, and The RavensPerch.
