"Restaurant"

It's Day Four of the Chupp Family Southern Tour. The first three days included hellos and goodbyes with long-lost friends, eggs to color and hunt, and an Easter service at a genuine Southern Baptist church, where the phrases "God's wheel" and "He's alahve" were heard. Now, I'm sorry to report that those phrases were heard from a velvet seat in the narthex, between sips of a coke chivalrously purchased for me by the head usher, because I got the 12-hour flu (and got it hard) in the middle of Sunday School.

I'm certain I will post more about the culinary aspects of those first few days, but Days One through Three were also completely tech-free, so I couldn't blog about them immediately. Today, we kissed our friends goodbye squarely on the jaw and headed for our second destination: Savannah, GA. I insisted that we not use an interstate between the towns, making it a four-hour drive instead of a three, but it was well worth it. We had a lovely trip full of wisteria, Spanish moss, plantations, tumble-down shacks, precious country churches and one puzzling school board election sign for Timbo Williams, who chose a behorned cartoon devil as his campaign mascot. Whabba wha?

To add to our day of local color, our goal was to have lunch at a place unlike any eatery at home. Since we were going through only small towns, our choice was made for us using some complicated math formula involving the unappealing look of a few places, the approximate distance to the next town and our escalating hunger. The role of the skeptical and unappreciative teenager was played to his fullest by Brooks, who thought that any place of business with a name like "Restaurant" would surely not have the intelligence or creativity to be trusted with food stuffs.

Michael, on the other hand, counted the number of pick-up trucks in the parking lot and thought that they were a sure indicator of lots of meat and few vegetables. That sounded good to him. The assumption by our waitress (who called me "hon") was that we would all have the buffet, and, sure enough, it was loaded with fried chicken, fried pork chops, sausage with potatoes and the like. One regular walked in and joked with the owner that he was ready to start working on his heart attack, as he picked up his plate for his first go-through at the buffet line. There was the obligatory salad bar and for dessert, peach cobbler and banana pudding. We washed it all down with sweet tea.

I thought this was going to be a short post, but I guess it hasn't been. The writing was all the more tedious as it was done at 1:00 AM under the covers in the hotel room, with Michael taking his half of the bed from the middle, and our son talking in his sleep across the room... something like "Mwaaahma hama MY HANDS!"

Pictures and more southern food to come. G'night.