After my last breakfast experience in DTC, I decided to eat someplace a little more my speed. A place that had a menu written in plain English with good ol' American fare: "Fried taters and whatnot. Maybe even a little of that there potted meat," I thought to myself in true Billy Bob fashion. Where the smell of fried something or other and cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the air. You might even meet a waitress named Flo or a cook named Mel. A place with a counter where you can smoke and cuss while you eat. So I ended up on East Colfax--surprise! It seems like every time I go looking for something 'real' I end up down there. Well, I was conceived in a trailer park after all.

Anyway, as I walked into The Ranch House I knew I was in the right place. There weren't any trucks outside, but this was a real truck stop café. Just as I had imagined, the smoke hung in the air like an entity unto itself. Everything smelled deliciously of fried and more fried. There was '70s decor everywhere: faux rock walls, dark panels here and there, a nicotine dependent potted ivy ... all this place needed was burnt orange carpet and a pole lamp!

"Yep, this here looks purdy good to me, umhuh," the sling blade voice from within commented. I sat down at the counter between a couple of guys in plaid shirts and baseball hats. I ordered a cup of the strongest truck driver coffee I've had in years. Let me pause here for a moment, to impart a little coffee enlightenment. See, frappe whosit and caffe bla-bla and all those other overpriced overrated coffee drinks--that's right I said coffee drinks--have one thing in common: strong coffee. It's called espresso. It's such a special little drink that it comes in a play tea cup and costs as much as a pot of real coffee. If you go to a truck stop at about noon, after the coffee has been cooking for hours and hours, it turns into syrup that will make your hair move! For less than a dollar! With refills! Mr. Espresso java can't say that! And you probably won't have to wear a beret or misspell your name to fit in. Not that there's anything wrong with wearing a beret, if you're in France!

Uh, um, sorry, about the rant, anyway, meanwhile, back at The Ranch House. I was looking over the menu while Hank Williams sang a course of the lovesick blues. Then I found it, right in between the mustard stain and the cigarette burn, the breakfast special! Eggs bacon hash browns and biscuits and gravy, served with a pot o' dippin' grease. I sat taking in the various conversations around me-- "... and then that lousy so and so said--" I heard to my left; "--and I'll be, if the whole rear end just fell out from underneath the dirn'd thing--" chimed in from my right; "--then I told ol' Carl that I didn't care if it was an accident, he was going to clean it up himself!" was the last thing I heard before my meal came. I tried to shake off the bits of conversation that were rattling around in my head, because I knew if I didn't my subconscious would be trying to decipher them all day.

That's how it happens you know. You hear something that doesn't make sense, and you think you've forgotten it, but you haven't. Your subconscious goes to work trying to make sense of it, like a computer trying to decipher pi. Then before you know it, you're downtown pushing a shopping cart yelling at traffic, or you're waiting for a bus in the produce section of Safeway. Yeah man, I've seen it go down. There's a lot of medically unexplained mental phenomena, but I know the real story. There was this guy I knew -- uh, well, sorry I got on another rant there ... it's all true though!

So anyway, my meal came. There it was steaming with fried goodness, congealing in its own greasy warmth. Then down the hatch it went. This was real power food. I could feel it marching straight toward my heart, clogging arteries on its way. Little cholesterol soldiers pushed past the walls of my heart into my chest cavity, trying to find their way through my rib cage. Now this was good eating! The kind of food that is so greasy, if you cut yourself shaving after a meal you'll bleed gravy. I took a couple big gulps of milk (served in a plastic Coke collector's glass--now that's class) and washed down the last of the greasy film, which had been building up on my teeth. Then I tossed a couple bucks on the counter and headed for the door, when I heard a rumble coming my way. No, it wasn't a convoy of trucks pulling into the parking lot--it was just my stomach's way of saying thanks for the solidifying grease bomb I had just forced it to deal with. All in all, it was just what I was looking for, but luckily I don't go a-lookin' for it too often. C (for cholesterol)

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