Mood:
hungryTopic: "$100, Are You Sure?" (5)
Frodo has written before about his fond memories of a motorcar, a radio, and the dark of night on a stretch of lightly-travelled interstate highway. When lights do beckon to an exit, it is often a guidepost to the Waffle House. Created by two Georgia Tech students, both whom incidentally are still alive and in their 80's, the greasy pleasantness of the waitresses, and the short-order cook, are a diversion for the loneliest of nights. The conversations are brief, but pleasant, and the fellow customers are as much fun as Saturday Night in Times Square. Where people such as these gather, interesting events are sure to happen, and these that follow were first chronicled by Sharon Gaus and Phil Kloer of the ATLANTA JOURNAL AND CONSTITUTION.
In March of 1999, a waitress at a Waffle House in Montgomery received a lottery ticket as a tip, and the result was a $10M first prize. Four co-workers sued.
April of 2003 gave us the funeral services of a frequent customer at the Waffle House near Gainesville. Attended by more than 40 fellow customers and emoloyees, past and present, the funerary urn sat atop the hood of a 1958 Oldsmobile.
It was in March of 2007 when police arrived at the Waffle House just outside Richmond, in order to break up a fight between two women. Using this as an opportunity, four drunken male customers skipped out without paying. Since their combined check was more than $100, police pursued at speeds reaching 110 mph (Frodo has computed that the entire menu price list is less than $100).
Without further explanation, in April of that same year, an Atlanta man barricaded himself in the mens room at the Waffle House just off Northside Drive in Atlanta. When police broke down the door, the customer was naked and attacked the officers with a toilet paper dispenser. He was maced and subdued.
On a lighter note, Bubba Mathis and Pam Christian, two Waffle House employees in Dacula, got married in the parking lot. The wedding party then gathered inside for cake and coffee.
Topping it all however, this past October, "Kid Rock" got into a "disagreement" with a Waffle House customer when his tour bus stopped at a Buford Highway location. Rock pleaded "no contest" to battery, and earned more than $12,000 for charity by signing autographs in the parking lot.
Samwise, travelling with Frodo, once took hold of the door handle outside a Waffle House on a long-forgotten byway, and held on for dear life when the handle came free from its mooring. Given that the employees inside were all quite busy, the quandary would have been best resolved if Sam had merely followed Frodo's advice, and let him keep it, as a souvenir.
