The God of the Waffle House

There is a godlike quality for me of all Waffle Houses in that they are open 24 hours a day 365 days a year (366 on Leap Year).   So just like God, they are always available.  But this phenomenon is all the more pronounced in that there are no less than six Waffle Houses within 10 miles of my residence.  Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I am aware of the fact that I could jump in my clothes, jump in my car, drive about two miles and eat breakfast.

But besides that, there is the mystery of the cooking process itself.  The servers, or salespersons as they are called, flank the cook and shout out their orders from both directions.  I understand that there is a trick to it.  As they are yelling "Mark one waffle" and "Pull one bacon"   and "Drop" this or that, the cook and the cook's assistant pull a plate down and put various jellies around the rim of the plate. These  jellies and their placement then tell the cook what to cook and how to cook it.  But think about it, some people, like me, want their eggs scrambled "light", others well done. Some want their eggs fried over easy and every other way possible.  Then there's the hash browns and whether they are smothered or covered or scattered or chunked. That steak with the eggs needs to be cooked to order.  Isn't it about time to take up that bacon and turn that egg over?  He wants his grits in a bowl but she wants hers on the plate. He wants country ham but she wants city ham. Even with the "trick" isn't this a bit like while the air traffic controller is watching the bleeps on the screen, two or three people are yelling "And there's also a couple of F-16s that need to land in between that 747 and 737." "And you might want to divert that 737 to another runway since that Piper Cub stalled a few minutes ago  on B32". "And the wind just changed from south/southwest to south/northeast so you might want to tell that Delta to bank a little to the left."  I'm just saying that I have all the respect in the world for Waffle House cooks.

There are at least eight patron saints of food and cooking. St. Lawrence, St. Martha, St. Elizabeth, St. Honore, St. Anthony, St. Hildegard, St. Nicholas and St. Drogo all are credited with being able to help us with the preparation and consumption of our food and drink.  If we only ask. Of all of these venerable saints, I have decided that St. Anthony is the patron saint of the Waffle House.  For several different reasons, St. Anthony's legacy is associated with pigs.  And what would the Waffle House be without its pigs?

I was at the Waffle House this morning for an hour and a half because I literally had nothing better to do.  I chose to invest that time watching the process.  I sat at the counter where I had a birds-eye view of the whole situation.  I didn't just watch the cook, I watched everybody.  When they're not taking orders or delivering food, they're filling coffee cups and cleaning up spills. They're taking orders over the phone and barking them to the cook.  They're under the counter washing dishes when they're not cleaning tables.  If they have nothing else to do, they're mopping the floor stopping to take somebody's payment.  While watching the cook, even knowing the "trick", I was utterly amazed.  It was then that I decided that Divine intervention was afoot.  There is no way that a mere mortal can keep all those  plates in the air, so to speak,  without help from above. And I thought, "If Pastafarians can have the Flying Spaghetti Monster then why can't Waffle House have its own god, too?"  I wouldn't think it would be the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the SEC since He's busy enough as it is. That's when I settled on St. Anthony.  If he had a thing for pigs then he must have a warm place in his heart for the Waffle House.

Since I'm watching my carbs, day or night at any Waffle House I order scrambled eggs with a side of bacon.  That's all I want. When I order the eggs and bacon and say "that's all", the waitress inevitably starts down the list of other choices. "Do you want hash browns?" "No thank you." "Do you want grits" "No thank you".  "Do you want tomatoes?"  "No thank you, I just want eggs and bacon."  So this morning I got way ahead and said, "I just want three scrambled eggs light and a side of bacon.  I don't want any hashbrowns, grits, tomatoes or anything else, just eggs and bacon."   After a slight pause she asked, "Do you want some  toast?"