Rows upon rows of young plants, mostly tomato and cabbage and pepper, perch on wooden shelves along the sidewalk. Fortunately, the nearby store is closed, so no one is around to watch me bend awkwardly over the Roma leaves to slowly inhale their fragrance.
“You guys ready yet?”
Dad waits patiently in the middle of the small gravel parking lot as mom retrieves her purse from our crimson Tahoe. We cross the quiet street and enter a set of mostly glass double doors, leaving the setting sun to compete with the solitary streetlight.
My brother, Micaiah, is already inside sitting at a small table amid a stuffy room roaring with voices, clanking silverware and tinkling ice cubes. I can see his left pant leg, covered in a layer of copper-colored dirt from where he slid into third base just 35 minutes ago. He’s at a four-person table with my grandparents who have borrowed an additional two chairs to fit on the ends.
I squirm through a maze of big feet protruding into the walkway and plop down onto a metal chair with a tear in the maroon cushion that exposes a slice of thick, yellow foam. My mom orders sweet tea, and she’s handed a generous plastic-glass with a jar of sugar water so she can make it as sweet as the wants. Because “that’s how we do it in the South.”
Our waitress, who wears a half-apron, a collared blouse, thick silver earrings and a smile that seems to hide the tired wrinkles near her eyes, stops by our table to see if we’re ready to order. Until now, we’ve been huddled together around the only two menus at the table. When we ask for more, she offers an unfiltered, nervous laugh, then scurries away on a mission.
A few minutes later, we’re ordering a BBQ boneless wings appetizer, a large supreme pizza, and five of their legendary burgers.
“If you want a piece of our pizza, you can have some,” Grandma says, directing her comment to her tall, muscular grandson whose brown curls spill out from under his ball cap. “Have you ever had their pizza here?”
“No, I only order the bacon cheeseburger. Even when I come here alone, I still can’t convince myself to eat anything different. I know if I order a pizza it means I won’t be able to eat the bacon cheeseburger.” He looks back down at his phone to show me a picture of a cathedral in Brazil built in an architectural style that reminds me of something I’ve seen on one of the Star Trek movies starring Chris Pine. Micaiah wants to travel to Brazil someday.
Growing up, we went out to eat a lot. Mom and Dad were both entrepreneurs and cooking just wasn’t very high on their list of priorities. So not only were we familiar with all the restaurants around Des Moines, but we also had our go-to dishes for each. At Paradise Pizza my mom always got a piece of the Florentine, a piece of the Thai chicken and a salad with the “best ranch dressing in the Midwest.”
At Macaroni Grill, we’d usually share an entree after filling up on their crispy, greasy bread. They’d bring out oil and pepper for dipping, and mom would always ask for some freshly grated parmesan. We would only tell the waitress to stop when she began to break a sweat, and then we’d explain to her apologetically that we really love cheese. The waitresses there used to write their names upside down with two crayons on the white, paper tablecloth as I watched in awe.
I don’t remember experiencing exotic or expensive foods as a kid, in part because we struggled a bit financially during a season of my childhood, so I got used to having to eat on a budget. One summer day when I was 10 years old, my mom and brother and I took all the change out of his green, jumbo crayon-piggybank so we could buy some dollar burgers from Sonic. We sat in the back of Mom’s Ford Expedition, with all the seats down, and had a picnic. We giggled a lot and got ketchup on the beige fabric, and Mom didn’t even get mad about it. Today, when my parents treat me to dinner, I have to remind myself not to look for the cheapest item on the menu.
Sometimes I wondered what it would’ve been like to serve three and four-course meals to guests at our home. I imagined using fancy plates, around which mom would show me the correct side to place the spoon and fork and knife, before telling Micaiah and me to pick up all our toys and hide them somewhere.
But then I remember the nights that Dad ordered pizza and invited his employees over, most of whom were hispanic. They’d bring their own authentic hot sauce and hang out in the basement with us, still wearing their “DeWitt Painting” t-shirt uniforms after a long day of work, while they smothered their slices in pure heat.
I remember a time when my mom brought my brother and me to visit one of their families. The wife invited us in warmly and immediately began fixing a box of mac-n-cheese to serve us. When I complained to my mom that I didn’t want any, she scolded me, took me aside and told me firmly that the woman had gone to a lot of trouble to make food for us and that we were going to eat it and tell her how much we appreciated it.
That’s the moment I realized food is less about being full and more about the people sitting with you at the table or standing with you in the basement, laughing at you as your face turns 11 different shades of red with beads of sweat materializing on your forehead.
A high-pitched squeal suddenly claims the attention of everyone in the one-room restaurant that’s lit entirely by the tungsten lightbulbs screwed into swirling ceiling fans far above us. We all turn to smile at the little girl and comment to the person sitting next to us about how cute she is.
Our waitress with the short salt-and-pepper hair that’s becoming more salt than pepper, brings us our order of wings with a small, plastic container of ranch. Without a second thought, I plunge my chicken into the community dip. What follows are a series of vehement protests and a request to our waitress for another small, plastic container of ranch. At least I have my own now.
“People do come here before prom!” my mom remarks under her breath as she sees a high school couple wearing formal clothes with matching purple accents walk past the big, blurry picture windows and through the double doors.
On our way here, I told Mom it might be busy because tonight was Crockett County High School’s prom. She looked at me skeptically and said with unfeigned confidence that people don’t take their prom dates to Bob’s Burgers. I love it when I’m right.
Just then, our food arrives. It takes three trips to and from the kitchen. Our waitress sets a red basket-plate in front of me, lined with off-white paper cut in jagged edges at the sides. In the middle sits a buttery-blond, pincushion of a bun that houses a lopsided, juicy burger, blue cheese dressing, and floppy caramelized onions, which provide a slight, pleasant crunch.
For the first time all night, there is silence at the table. I look up and catch the movement of messy fingers and faces fixed on nothing but the food in front of them.
“You have mustard on your shirt,” I tell my brother before he scurries to the bathroom, trying to preserve the thick fabric of his white baseball jersey with the slender red lines framing a series of buttons that are currently unattached.
After the waitress delivers our check, a man walks over to ask about the Iowa State sweatshirt Grandpa is wearing. The man is closer to my dad’s age and they begin to discuss how they’re both from Iowa but ended up at Bob’s Burgers in Bells, Tennessee, on a Friday night because they each married Southern women. After exchanging a look that no one else at the table seems to be able to decode, the man says he pastors a church about 20 minutes away and invites us to stop by and say hi sometime.
“Looks like you’ve made a new friend, Dad.”
Photo by Mattanah DeWitt
