Ep. 113: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Where To Eat On the Road

to eat when you're on the road. Who's hungry? Hungry? Brent? What do you mean who's hungry? What's hungry? You got to do with it? If it's time to eat, let's eat. So it's time and you're in the area you ain't familiar with. So what you're gonna do? How you gonna find a spot that's got the vitals you like without eating the same old thing at the Clowns place or at that other burger joint where the dude wears the crown in the bredges like Shakespeare. Well, I'm gonna tell you.

We're gonna cover all of that and more. But first I'm gonna tell you a story. There was an old country store near New Edinburgh, Arkansas, located in the fork where one graveled county road wide and became two. One went toward our house and the other toward Crane Lake, where it wasn't uncommon in the spring and summer to find a boat full of reves boys drowning crickets one

blue gill brim at a time. Now, that story had been there for as long as I can remember, and mister Almas Marks owned and operated it and had sense what seemed like before the Allies put the Germans in checked the first time. But when mister Almos retired, some folks took it over that were nice and friendly enough and provided a service to the rest of us living in the in the country by not having to drive

all the way to town for a few necessities. The only issue was while they kept the store clean, their personal hygiene habits were somewhat suspect. That's not true, they weren't suspect at all. They were non existent. So we didn't buy sandwiches that they made there, but we would get lunch, meat, bread, and other packaged groceries. My Dad and I were headed home one evening from the lake and as we got inside of the store, Dad said, how about we fry up some bologna for supper. Now,

let's talk about fry blogonna for just a minute. It's one of those things that if you know, you know our bologne had a first name, and it wasn't Oscar like that old Oscar Mayer jingle. Suggested it was pe tit and stood for pettijen blogne that was and continues to be made right here in the great state of Arkansas.

And when I say there's no comparison between how good petty gen loney is frieda or otherwise, when compared to every other factsemble of lunch meat called himself bloonna, you better pay attention because I have just rendered unto you indisputable facts from the Book of Brent for the people of Brent. It is that good. But I digress, and back to the story. We called them just before they closed and went straight to the meat counter. The lady said, hey, buddy,

you and Brent catch any fish today? My dad said, yes, ma'am, but we're too hungry to clean them and cook them tonight. So we're just going to clean these fish and just fry up some balogna for supper with a smile that had teeth but resembled a fence around the haunted house. She smiled and said, how much do y'all want? And I was still young, and I was at eye level

on the customer side of the glass. She fired up the meat slicer, and I watched her as she reached into that lighted meat counter for that uncut five pounds stick of pettig in balognea, with the filthiest hand and fingernails I'd ever seen on a human bend. It looked like she was wearing a pair of dirty brown new gloves. My dad saw it too. I slowly looked up at him and seeing a disgusted look of horror on his face, and waited for his next move. It was then I

got a lesson in my mind. We had two options. One just say we changed our mind and grabbed some crackers and potted meat and hit the door. Or two, try to build a sandwich from the best ballogney on the planet that had been sliced in packaged by hands, resembling a literal peatrie bucket of weapons grade nasty. There was no amount of heat in that skillet that was

going to erase that image out of my head. However, in one of the slickeest moves I've ever been blessed to witness, my dad stammered a little at first, but gained his composure and said, wait a minute, I'll just take the whole stick and I'll come around and get it out of there. And just like that, he had chosen option three, which was take her completely out of the equation. We had fried bologna for supper that night

instead of potted meating crackers or a staff infection. As a matter of fact, we had fried.

Jersey after a successful hunt many years ago. All of a sudden, a dough deer ran out in front of us and wound up under my old bronco and our boat and trailer, which doesn't farewell for the long every day of a do deer. Tim called the game board and he said we could have it, so we loaded her up in the boat took off for the duck Camp road kill. It's just like sweet milk, it does

a body good. But being fresh out of roadkill. Clayton nukle When I found ourselves in this very situation only a short time ago, coming home from a turkey hunt Missouri, we ain't had aboute to eat all day and it had done got over into the afternoon, so we started looking for some groceries. Soon as we hit the city limits of Lebanon, Missouri, population fifteen thousand and thirteen, in the hometown of Harold Bell Wright Arthur of the novel

Shepherd of the Hills. I'm driving and Clays starts digging around on Google looking for a good spot. Well, Google won only take you so far, and you never really know about those online reviews about the food. There's no telling who wrote it. And there's folks out here running around that'll eat anything, and if that wasn't true, Lewis Grizzard would have never warned us years ago about how you never ever eat at a place that says they have food just like your mama's. I promise you they

do not. It's all a matter of taste or lack of And I've been in different parts of this great nation of ours and adds some great food, but there is some drastic differences in what folks call good food. Some of it is a struggle to call food. And I'm sure there's plenty of people who think I'm crazy for loving squirrels like I do. My wife is one of them, but what she know, Her judgment is obviously

suspect from the company she keeps. And my dad, who killed more squirrels than any person I know on this orbiting rock we call Earth, wouldn't that one if he was starving to death. That's the true story. But that's fine more from me, and they ain't got to share, so we actually Elevanon in Minu clay Bows Hunger Pangs. He mentioned something about a Messican place he was reading about,

and I like Messican food. My wife Alexis, who is from Texas, could eat it for breakfast, but I could kind of burned out on it after a while, so I told them to look for something a little more north of the border. About that time, he said, there's a barbecue and a fish place right up the road according to Google. Ah fish. I know it's going to be catfish, and I could eat fish every day. And if they've got barbecue, my kind of barbecue. Then it went on in instead of move prior to its arrival

to the restaurant. As we got closer, I could see the sign and the vehicles in the parking lot about as many cars as the trucks, and a couple of big rigs that were parked there too. Now there's our clues about the food right here, right out in the bald open truckers can sniff out of place to eat, but you can't always go by where you see their trucks. Sometimes they have to eat where they can get the

trucks parked off the road. So it could be a place of convenient parking more so than the quality of the food. Also, you got to figure in the time of day. If it's in the early afternoon, between dinner and supper, you know, the noon and the evening meal and the parking is at a premium and resembles a slow day at the used car lot, you're probably in

for some good victuals. On the other hand, if it's getting close to the time when people normally eat and parking lot is empty, well that's a sign that they're either closed or they should be. Now. Most kids would eat chicken out of a mailbox. Don't matter where you are or what you're doing. It could be the finest Italian Chinese or famous steakhouse restaurant, or any food specific oriented place and they'll holler, I want some chicken strips,

and I have to admit I like them too. But you need to be careful about the food you order from places not necessarily themed in that direction. Trout almondine, which I love from a nice place in Little Rock that alexis and not go to on occasion, is not something I'd order if I sew it on the menu or at a at a cafe or a diner where you can see in the kitchen and the waitress caused you, honey. They might be fine, but a safer bet is the

chicken fried steak. That's my default at any place I'm unfamiliar with and don't receive any vibes from the menu or plates of those eating around me. It's hard to screw up a chicken fried steak, Nate can be done, but come on, it ain't that hard to fix a decent one. I was scrolling through Instagram the other day and saw old chef Kevin Gillespie sharing his grandma's family recipe for a chicken fried steak that had me hankering for one, the one that he was cooking before the

video ended. I'll tell you one thing for sure, the one he was cooking would have been a safe bet anywhere and any time, which brings me back to picking out a place to eat and ordering food from a place you really don't feel as soon as to be serving it. Would I eat spaghetti from Basking Robbins? What about fried rabbit from an Army mess Hog? Yes? Would

I regret it? Definitely. In September of nineteen eighty seven, I found myself in the company of several hundred other freshly peeled headed America loving volunteer Army recruits at Fort Sell, Oklahoma. If you've never been there, you should go. It's quite an anomaly. The wind blows in every direction at once all the time, and everywhere you need to march or run to next is always uphill, and all the folks you see are mad and hollering at you for you

to hurry up now. That post was built back in eighteen sixty nine and has been occupied by the United States Army ever since. It was a stepping off point for a lot of western expansion back in the day when the government's idea of getting into the realty business was showing up at someone's door with a cannon and asking them if they'd ever thought about selling out and

moving away. It's also the barrel place of G's your Automo, and we used to run past his grave every morning during pt. It was the only section of ground where we were silent when we passed out of respect. We were training to be warriors, and our drill sergeants demanded we honor a real one. Unfortunately, that same level of respect was not shown to whoever was in charge of buying meat for the mess sergeant to cook for his troops. More on that in a minute. It was Friday evening

we were standing in formation outside the mess hall. About a month in the basic training Army breakfast at that time was as good as you could get in any cafe. Eggs to order, grits, pancakes, sausage, bacon, toast, biscuits, gravy. Sos. Don't know what sos is, Ask your grandpa when your grandma. Are you listening? He'll tell you. But I enjoyed breakfast.

It's still my favorite meal of the day, and we'll have it for supper sometimes now, but back at forth sil Once you got to the next two meals of the day, it was a craps you as to what the menu held, especially for a country boy from Arkansas. Lots of hamburgers, spaghetti, baked pork chops and ham, things like that that were edible, but they just tasted bland to me. Now I also realized that they were feeding the multitude of troops and only keeping us healthy enough

to brutalize on a daily basis. That was the real reason they were letting us eat anyway. They didn't fix food like I'd grown up eating, Like that corn bread I was eating every day that was so sweet, I thought it was cake. I remember a buddy of mine from Boston said, boy, you country boys really like that corn bread. Huh, you eat it like dessert every day, and I'm sure that they ain't really like it how

he talks, But that's why I remember it. But anyway, I answered, man, I ain't had no corn bread since I left home. I've been seeing it posted on the menu just about every day. But by the time we get here, all they got left is this cake. As disappointed as I was in the Army's version of cornbread, I don't know why I was so excited to see fried rabbit posted on the mess hall menu one evening. Did I see that right? Fried rabbit? Oh lord, y'all,

please don't wake me up. Let me finish this beautiful dream I'm having about eating a mess of fried cottontails. It was October and rabbit season back home, and I love fried cottontail rabbit. And though I was only away in a neighboring state, I might as well be on the moon. When it comes time to eat and supper. Every day, nothing was the same, and yet there it was,

right there on the menu, fried rabbit. I was about to be rudely awakened from that dream by the time it took to move the forty or so troops in front of me out of the way so I could get some groceries. I was about to have a fit. I could smell the familiar aroma of fried food about a minute before I got the first glimpse of what the army called fried rabbit. There was a huge pile of them there behind the glass, and they all looked

like hind legs, hind legs off a shellling pony. I never seen such a sight, and I couldn't imagine how big the rabbit was. They'd cut them legs off of My immediate thought is I wish they'd left foot on there so I know exactly what creditor that running gear had come from. That I was about to eat, But they said it was rabbit, and I was excited to eat it. The mess all PFC looked up at me and said one or two. No, wait a minute, they

gonna let me have two of them. I'm in I answered, too private, and he dropped two of them magnet rabbit hams on my tray, blowing mash taters and English peas off into the floor and on me like that rabbit's last act of defiance before getting it. It was giving the boys on KP something to mop up after we'd left. Then rabbit legs took up so much space on my tray that I had to toe my corn bread cake in the cargo pocket and my bead he use. There's

rules for everything in basic training. Everything. Your drill sergeant is there to encourage you to follow them. He's there to tell you when to eat, how long you can eat, when to stop eating, and when to get up and get out of the messhow so you can run uphill some more. He's also there to make sure you clean your plate of all the food the army prepared for you every bite. They'll feed you a lot, but you

better eat it or there would be repercussions. That had slipped my mind when the opportunity of getting two rabbit legs came about two's better than one, right, Well, that's what I thought. Now. When our drill sergeant finally said we had five minutes to eat, I grabbed that first, humongous rabbit leg, did a bicep curl to get it up to my mouth, and took a bite. The amount of grease that ran out of the corners of my mouth was enough to have had a small fish fry.

It was terrible. It was tough as woodpecker lips, chewed like a tennis ball, and I had two of them to eat. That was thirty six years ago, and I ain't had a bite of fried rabbit sins, not even a nibble. Michael Roseman has some good rabbit dogs, and I love hunting them, so I think I'll try them again this winter, and I'll let y' all know how that goes. Growing up in the South, and I can only guess it's the same way in most points of the Compass. But here folks look for an occasion to

gather and eat. Someone died, someone had a baby, somebody got married, somebody had an anniversary, somebody got parrolled. Whatever, it's all cook, eat fellowship, and enjoy everyone's company. That's why the food been so good. As important you're out there on a long trip, it'll help those long ones seem a little shorter. It'll add joy to the good times and comfort to the hard ones. But let the food be bad, and woe is me, it'll only compound the pain. I give you a prime example of bad

food making a bad situation worse. Many moons ago and before I had the sense equal to what God gave a goose and before I corrected myself and she had a salt upon my liver and senses. I stumbled home in the early morning darkness on a Sunday morning, after making a long night of bad decisions. I'd made so many bad decisions that night that one would think I didn't have any left to make between Mama's front door and my bedroom. But I did. I had one more left in me, and boy, it was a good one.

A fellow that has restricted his diet to adult beverages for several hours will eventually get hungry. And since I was walking through the kitchen at the time, I realized I hadn't eat anything all day. What better place to stop and fix myself a snack. There were no leftovers in the ice box, so I looked up in the freezer and I found a bag of frozen breaded chicken strips. They looked fantastic on the picture on the bag. Why not throw a handful of these rascals in the microwave

and have myself a snack before hitting the hate. Remember what I said about kids eating chicken out of the mailbox, Well, folks that pour a thief in their mouth all night to steal the brains, will eat warmed up raw chicken strips from the microwave and get salmonella poisoning. I'll spare you any more details about what happened a few hours later.

That continued for a couple of days. But if you're curious as to whether I lived through that literal biblical flood of sickness, I can't tell you because I'm still not sure. I told my dad about that years later, and he told me that that wasn't uncommon for young men to lose their sense of good judgment in a iur of weakness, that it had happened to him as well. He said he remembered drinking moonshine all night in his youth, and he'd eating one peanut. Next day he woke up,

he felt about. He swore he'd never eat peanuts again. So let's bring this home. Where are we going to eat? When we're out on the road. You can easily find all the franchise places that were all familiar with, But I like to look for the places where the folks that are cooking are dependent on feeding enough people to pay their light bills and make the car payments. These folks are taking pride in what they're preparing and hoping you'll like it as well. They want you to like

it well enough to come back. Places like Cheryl's Diner cab at Arkansas, where you can eat a platter of groceries called a gobbly goop. It's every breakfast item you can think of, except pancakes piled on two cathead biscuits and covered in gravy. I can hear my left ventricl slim and shut just thinking about it. Boy, it's good. How about Big Zach's Place in the Logan's Port, Louisiana for fish steaks and crawfish, or some vitals from Stanley's

famous pitt Barbecue in Tyler, Texas. I've even got it on good authority that Spanky's Diner in Newfoundland, PA makes the world's greatest cream chip beef over toast breakfast. Any Pennsylvanian or any other human being would be fortunate enough to poke fork in. There's goodness and supporting our neighbors. And I'm not saying the folks that are slinging fries and burgers out of the drive through or running the franchises ain't our neighbors, because our neighbors are working there.

I'm saying, let's not forget about the places off the beaten path. I like to look for them first. Make sure that late night chickens cooked thoroughly. And if you ever find yourself in Lebanon, Missouri and have a hanker for some catfish, Down's Catfish House and Barbecue about a half mile off of Interstate forty four is a safe bed. You can tell them me and old Clay Bow. Since it this is Brent Reeves signing off, y'all be careful.