Tales From the Waffle House and other 24/7 Adventures

Once upon a time in Hollywood - my Hollywood - I spent an awful lot of time with an old black bluesman named Solomon at a place called Ben Frank's on Sunset Boulevard.  I just looked it up, and it's listed on Rock and Roll Roadmaps, and it still exists, only now it's Mel's Drive-In.  (???)  But I liked it the way it was, a 24/7 place where Solomon and I could meet over coffee and cigarettes and sometimes a little food and endless conversation.  We often got kicked out, not because we were there too long - there was no such thing, at least not late at night - but because Solomon would have a tendency to eventually go off on a rap about how the only religion that embraced the full erotic aspect of God's love was Hinduism (and he waxed very poetic), and then hit on the waitress, who usually thought he was a dirty old man.  Maybe he was, but he was a damn good friend - in fact he saved my life one night at a place called the Free Church, which is a whole 'nother story, that maybe I'll tell another time.  And I love a good long conversation on something besides the weather and politics.

That - and recovery from hangovers - is what 24/7 restaurants are for.

Check out Waffle House.

Everyone who's ever lived in the South has eaten at Waffle House more times than they can count.  Open 24-7, there's no where else in many towns open at 3 AM where you can get coffee, breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  If they ever add beer to the menu, no one would ever leave.

The motley assortment of people at a Waffle House at any time must be seen to be believed - Sunday churchgoers and the local homeless all chowing down together - but there are those who only walk by night, and they know where they can come.  Granted, the glaring lighting and 3 sided floor-to-ceiling windows are hard on the hung over.  But that's the price you pay for pecan waffles and an accessible bathroom.

And then there's the floor show:  how many places, other than Benihana's, have their chefs in constant view of the clientele?   I've sat there many a time, feeling a little rocky, watching the master chefs of Waffle House flipping burgers, eggs, and hashbrowns all the while tapping, singing, dancing to the radio and/or joking with each other, flirting with the waitresses, and (in olden days) smoking like chimneys without dropping ash anywhere but the floor.  Amazing.

I remember when the local Waffle House in Bristol, TN was taken over by a Yankee manager.  The guy - young know-it-all type - came in and started giving everyone hell about all kinds of stuff.  Not that anyone was paying attention.  They figured he'd move on sooner or later, and if they had anything to do with it, it would be sooner.

"He wants me to go out and chip weeds in the parking lot," said our favorite late-night waitress.  "Now I ain't doin' that.  And I let him know it.  He said he'd fire me.  I said, when do you think I'm gonna find the time to do that?  He say, you can do it when things are quiet 'round here.  When does he think that is?  Four a.m., and it's pitch dark?  I'm not going out there.  And at five, all them people from the factory come in, they shift over, and I'm running the counter like my ass is on fire?  I don't think so."

Another order he gave - to our favorite day waitress - was that she quit putting raw rice in the salt-shakers.  "Where is that boy from, anyway?  Don't he know that if you don't put rice in the salt-cellars, they gonna turn into Lot's wife?  How else you gonna made that salt flow?  He ain't never been here in July or August, that's for damn sure.  You want your hash browns smothered and covered?"  Hell yes.

There was also the time when the carnival came to town, and apparently one of the carnies made off and made hay with the girlfriend of one of the cooks.  The cook didn't take it well, especially when the carnie showed up at the Waffle House for sustenance before the carnival took off on Monday morning.  Let's just say that no one was chipping weeds in the parking lot that day but the carnie, and it was mostly with his teeth, as the cook bounced him around the asphalt.

And there were always drug deals in the parking lot, the homeless / wino regulars taking a snooze in that back booth that's almost out of sight of the windows, the constant gossip, and the police who ignored all of it, because they wanted a pecan waffle, too.

And we were all snobbish with it.  A Waffle House in Wytheville, Virginia.  Everyone's smoking, including us.  It's raining outside.  Inside, a nice thick haze of cigarette smoke, frying onions, waffle batter, burgers, grease, and coffee.  Perfect.  A car pulls up outside, New York license plates, and a couple gets out.  They walk in, and the woman looks around and asks, "Where is the non-smoking section?"  The waitress didn't miss a beat:  "In New York City."  The couple left, and the entire restaurant clientele stood up and applauded.

Of course, I enjoyed 24/7 restaurants more back in the day when I was apt to be up and around 24/7.  (Now I consider 9 PM seriously late and generally don't answer telephone calls after 8.)  When I was in my early 20s in Atlanta, in between Waffle Houses, the go-to places were the Majestic Diner at Plaza Drugs and Doby's, both on Ponce De Leon.  (Photo at right thanks to GA State Library Digital Collections.)

Back then the Majestic was just known as Plaza Drugs, and was known for its drugged-up clientele.  We Doby's customers liked to think we were a little more normal, but come on, when you have people walking other people in on a leash at midnight, there's nothing normal going on.  Except for the fact that the walker and walkee were both just showing off.  But at least we knew it was abnormal, and we showed our disapproval by ignoring them, despite their doing everything they could to get our attention.  The waitress' attention.  Somebody's attention.  Anyone's attention.

NOTE:  The worst thing in the world is to be deliberately, flamboyantly shocking and depraved and have no one pay attention.  😉  That is the tragedy of adolescence - temporary or permanent - in a nutshell.

Anyway, I was a Doby's fan, because they had better food.  And it was cheap.  Back in the mid-70s, you could get a vegetable plate (four veg and cornbread or biscuit) for probably $2.00, and breakfast with meat for $2.75.  A 3-piece chicken dinner would run you about $3.25.  I remember this, because we were all poor, doing our starving artist thing in the Little Five Points and North Highlands areas.  Mary Mac's (which is still around) was too expensive for us.

But again, the real purpose of 24/7 restaurants is a place where a group of people could sit over coffee and conversation for hours.  Face to face, laughing, talking, gossiping, arguing, exchanging ideas and dreams, plans and artwork, for hours.  It was great.

And I think that's what I'd have missed the most if I'd been born in, say, 1990-2000.

Because before the pandemic, the smart phone arrived and ate up the entire attention span of a multi-generational group that apparently had had enough of people, and wanted to spend all their time texting.  From grandmothers to kids, it's been all eyes and thumbs on screen, for years.

So, why are they suddenly hungering for other people's live company?  I mean, we've all seen it:

• the people in a restaurant, everyone on their own smartphone, no one talking;
• the people in a park, on their smartphones, while their kids played and occasionally begged for their attention;
• the people walking, on their smartphones, never looking up (one walked into our parked car at the grocery store a few years ago, looked at us, shook his head, stepped to the right, lowered his head, and kept going).

Smartphones destroyed riding on subways and buses.  The sights you used to see!  I'll never forget Rughead in Atlanta, who spent all day long riding MARTA, wearing the worst wig in the world, stapled to his head...  Or all the tags of conversation, which I would note down in my little scribble book.  "Ain't no way I'm gonna tell my sponsor everything, even if I am working my program.  I'm not going to prison, even for my sobriety."

Smartphones destroyed the old coffee shops.  Starbucks is simply a vendor of hot liquid; nobody sits and talks there, they're on their tablets or smartphones or laptops, but no one talks.  And coffee shops, from the 1600s on, were all about talk.  That's what they were for.  Ask Samuel Johnson.

Anyway, you'd think the smartphone crowd - like the militia / survivalist types - would be the last people to be bugging out during this time of social distancing.  But no.  Joni  Mitchell was right.  "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Maybe some day we'll all get talking again.  And make some new tales to boot.

Stay well, stay safe, stay home.

Meanwhile, Blatant BSP:

Check out stories by yours truly:

"Brother's Keeper" in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May/June 2020.

"Pentecost"  in Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology, SleuthSayer Elizabeth Zelvin, editor

"Embraced"  in Startling Sci-Fi.

The True History of Nero Wolfe

Because I read everything, to the great detriment of doing almost anything else, occasionally I come across such obvious patterns, such amazing coincidences, that I have to share them with someone. Thus, I am happy to relate that I have found the true origins of Nero Wolfe. The only question is, whether it's genetics or reincarnation. I'll let you decide.
For those of you who have never met the one and only Nero Wolfe, he is the misogynistic, gourmet one-seventh of a ton detective who lives in a brownstone in New York City and only leaves it under extreme emergency conditions. He solves mysteries usually without leaving his chair, leaving the footwork to Archie Goodwin, his amanuensis, investigator, and general thorn in Wolfe's side. His brownstone is his haven, his castle, his fortress, in which he follows a rigid routine, cares for his orchids and his stomach, and is cared for by Archie and Fritz, his cook. (Theodore helps with the orchids, but let's face facts: nobody – not even Nero Wolfe – likes him.)



Some theories (and I get these straight from Wikipedia) are that Wolfe (born, according to Rex Stout and Archie Goodwin, in Montenegro) was the offspring of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, who had an affair in Montenegro (why they chose that country to frolic in is undetermined). Others have said that if Wolfe was of Holmesian descent, it was via Mycroft, who was vast and logical, like him. Others have posited the thief Arsene Lupin as Wolfe's father. However, this is all gilding the lily, not to mention assuming that one detective (or thief) leads to another.

I believe that the origins of Nero Wolfe go all the way back to the early 18th century. Specifically to 1709, when Samuel Johnson was born, who grew up to be a man of exceptional mind and memory, a man to whom no place was so suitable to live as a major metropolis, in his case, London, and whose girth and eccentricities were as legendary as were his literary abilities. I speak, of course, of Dr. Johnson, lexicographer, poet, playwright, journalist, and wit.

What led me to correlate Nero Wolfe with Samuel Johnson was re-reading Boswell's "Life of Johnson". Their size, their reluctance to travel from their adopted great city (London for Dr. Johnson, New York for Nero Wolfe), their constant reading, and their love of food is identical. Both have remarkably similar amanuenses (Archie Goodwin, James Boswell) whom they find alternately useful, irritating, ubiquitous, and indispensable. Both Goodwin and Boswell are - to the urban dweller - from the sticks (Ohio and Scotland respectively). Both Goodwin and Boswell have had numerous amatory encounters, though Boswell was more graphic in his (secret) reminiscences than Goodwin. Essentially both write biographies, although neither are as educated, logical, or eccentric as their subjects.

Archie to the left, Boswell above.

Yes, Dr. Johnson did marry (to a woman twice his age), while Nero Wolfe is, at first glance, the ultimate misogynist. (But even Nero Wolfe liked to look at women's legs: see The Silent Speaker, Chapter 20) But "Tetty" was Johnson's only known dalliance, and he was known to be as severe as Nero Wolfe in his judgments upon the fairer sex. (“Never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on ’t.”) But they both were respectful of virtuous wives and mothers, as well as of professional women who were good at what they did: Dol Bonner and Jackie Jaquette, in Wolfe's world; the writers Charlotte Lennox and Fanny Burney in Johnson's world.

But to me, it was the use of language that cinched it. It is almost identical. See if you can tell who said what:

1. "Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else"
2. "What finally ruled [Voltaire] out was something that hadn't been mentioned at lunch at all: he had no palate and not much appetite. He was indifferent to food; he might even eat only once a day; and he drank next to nothing. All his life he was extremely skinny, and in his later years he was merely a skeleton. To call him a great man was absurd; strictly speaking, he wasn't a man at all since he had no palate and a dried-up stomach."
3. "I know not why any one but a school-boy in his declamation should whine over the Common-wealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another"
4. “We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.”
5. "The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."
6. “I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.”
7. "Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment."
8. “A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.”
9. "[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.”
10. "He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty."
11. "Where there is no education, as in savage countries, men will have the upper hand of women. Bodily strength, no doubt, contributes to this; but it would be so, exclusive of that; for it is mind that always governs. When it comes to dry understanding, man has the better."
    "The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small."
12. “The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold -- if you have one.”
13. "A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet."
14. "I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read."
15. “A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them."
16. "It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives."
17. “A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality”
18. "The right to lie in the service of your own interests is highly valued and frequently exercised.”
19. “More people saying what they believe would be a great improvement. Because I often do I am unfit for common intercourse."
20. "I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding."
21. "A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him."
22. “To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.”
23. "A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say."
24. “To assert dignity is to lose it.”
25. "The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public."
26. “Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes."

(Answers at the bottom of the page)

For my final piece of evidence, I give you the novel Gambit, in which Nero Wolfe burns a dictionary - bought with a flammable cover on purpose - because it allows the use of "imply" in place of "infer". A passion for precise language was certainly passed down from the man who wrote "A Dictionary of the English Language".

Sadly, Dr. Johnson had no children. But he did have a brother, Timothy, who had children. The genes were put into the pool. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you twin sons, separated by time. So, was Nero Wolfe a descendant of Samuel Johnson's brother Timothy? Or is he a reincarnation?

Put a wig on the one, take the Tourette's away from the other, and we might just have the answer!

Nero Wolfe - 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26

Samuel Johnson - 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21, 22, 24, 25