By Stan Purdum
You’ve no doubt noticed that eating out has gotten more expensive lately, and even a Big Mac Meal for you and your sweetie will now put a big dent in a $20 bill. That got me recalling when, in 1995, I pedaled across America, eating most meals out, and how little I spent most days. Here’s how I talked about dining on that trip, from my book, Roll Around Heaven All Day:
The small towns of America don’t, as a rule, offer fast-food restaurants, discount stores and especially not bicycle shops, but those that are thriving at all boast a sense of “center,” some locus where even a visitor can sense the verve of the community. Sometimes that hub is a grocery or general store, but more often, it’s someplace that serves meals.
Depending on local custom or whimsy, these establishments may be dubbed restaurant, café, cantina, bistro or diner, but they have in common that they bear absolutely no resemblance to a seen-one-you’ve-seen-them-all franchise, and they serve as a gathering point for area residents.
I have seldom dined in a small-town café I didn’t like. Usually untouched by interior decorators, the decor often appears to have “just growed” and may include some odd mismatches of paint, paneling and wallpaper. There’s generally a serving window or simply an open door connecting the dining area with the kitchen, and you can usually catch at least a glimpse of the cook at work, especially if you sit at the counter. When cycling alone, I especially like the counter, where I can be a single patron but still sit with people and sometimes join a conversation.
Those serving the food are generally female, and not one of them begins with the cutesy “Hi. I’m Tammy. I’ll be your server today.” They’re still comfortable being called waitresses, although more often, since all the locals know each other anyway, they are simply referred to by their names. And their first word to customers is something more welcoming than identifying their serving function: It’s “Coffee?”
The menu, if not just scrawled on an erasable wall board, is a typewritten affair in a plastic pocket folder, sometimes with a handwritten daily-special sheet tucked in as well. While food selection is often limited, with some restaurants depending too much on sandwiches and fries, those that offer a wider choice generally adhere to rib-sticking basic dishes, offered at a reasonable price. The noontime $3.95 special is likely to be meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy and a side of baked beans or coleslaw. Homemade chicken noodle tops the preferred soup-of-the-day list, with bean and ham vying with chili for second place.
When serving the food, the emphasis is on getting it out fast and hot. But there’s always plenty of coffee and always, always pie. On day rides, there’s enough nourishment in a café meal to wipe out the calorie-burning benefit of the cycling itself, but on longer tours, where cyclists actually burn more calories than they can consume, these meals are welcome succor.
In his now classic travel narrative, Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon reported judging the food quality of diners by the number of calendars on their walls: the more calendars, the better the food. But since so many insurance agencies and grain elevators have stopped giving out free calendars, Moon’s standard no longer seems reliable. Dayton Duncan, another traveler-author, looked for restaurants identified by the owner’s first name, as in “John’s Café.” But bike routes run through towns so tiny that often there’s only one dining establishment to choose from, regardless of its name. So for cyclists, the meal quality is whatever it is, which is part of the adventure. I’ve more often been pleased than disgusted.
But more important than savoriness and decorating scheme is that these diners serve as the hearths of their communities, gathering places much as home kitchens once were when mothers could stay home. Small-town eateries percolate with life. Breakfast brings a mix of people nursing cups of coffee and exchanging exuberant greetings and quiet small talk. Working men predominate among the noon crowd, feeling no compunction about keeping their farm caps on or raising their voices — though the volume is driven more by camaraderie than rowdiness. Families frequent the diner for the supper hour, where the sound level is again mellow. If you’ve ever spent a night in a one-café town, you soon learn that a perceptible energy-dissipation occurs when the place closes for the evening.
So much does a café sustain the heartbeat of a town that even if other businesses shut down for good, the community can retain the sense of vitality that marks it as a locale of hospitality and human concourse — the stuff of life itself — as long as the café stays in business.
Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.
My mother-in-law had a rule about eating in new places: Never eat in a place called FOOD unless the only other place in town is called EAT. That said, beggars can’t be choosers and when touring I have partaken of both FOOD and EAT more than once.
Good perspective. Thanks.
On my first cross-country ride I was afraid we’d have to eat at McDonalds & others like it. Nope. The towns were too small to support those fast-food giants. Lots of the cafes you describe, ranging from very, very good to…edible. I did miss vegetables. The only ones available seemed to be a bit of iceberg lettuce and an unripe tomato. It was definitely part of the adventure!