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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 2018)
24 Wednesday, January 24, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon The Bunkhouse Chronicle Craig Rullman Columnist Notes on a greasy napkin I like to write in diners. I like it because I always hear something marvelous about politics, or the weather, and also because there is some- thing inspirational in the smell of bacon, the com- fort of a worn-out booth beside a picture window, and the reliable goodness of hashed browns, two eggs over-medium, and a side of English muffins. One day last week saw me in a booth early enough to enjoy Sisters in that golden hour — you know the one I mean — when the kids are all in school and the shops are just opening up, right before Cascade Avenue is shaken to pieces by 18-wheelers jake-braking through the crosswalks. There were four men at the counter — of Korean War vintage — who were talking about the weather. One of them mentioned the weather in Kentucky, point- ing out that it was 3 degrees in Lexington. The guy in the red ball-cap suggested that that was another reason not to live in Kentucky, which was seconded and passed without objection. I’ve never been to Kentucky so I have noth- ing to add. What I imagine is a triptych of Americana: picture-book thoroughbred farms, distillery smoke- stacks, and Pentecostals up- the-holler handling snakes in a clapboard church. There is no reason to believe any of those images are accurate, but its what pops into my head whenever I hear the word Kentucky. I let the thought go — I was hitchhiking on the whole conversation anyway, which is a singular pleasure of writ- ing in diners — and focused instead on my breakfast, which came out fast and hot and brilliant. I generally avoid any eat- ery with pictures of food on the menu. I understand that many modern customers are visual learners and, this being 21st-century America, they probably need a color photo to assist with reading comprehension, but a proper menu should insist on lit- eracy, which is why the only pictures on it should be of Western landscapes, horses, or guns. I always add a dash of Tabasco to my plate. Lately, I’ve noticed that a lot of diners are pushing green Cholula in the condiments basket, but I never put any kind of green sauce on my food. Particularly breakfast. Red-sauce-or-no-sauce is my gringo sauce bias. The sausage patty was thin but seasoned right. a nonprofit charity that provides fully guided and outfitted trips for disabled Veterans at no charge more than 2,000 veterans were served last year All guides and board members are disabled veterans. There are no paid employees. Warfighter Outfitters is 100% volunteer-based and only spends donor dollars on basic operating costs of fuel and food. All operating costs are funded by donor dollars. Would you consider making a donation to Warfighter Outfitters today? warfighteroutfitters.org Warfighter Outfitters • 541-719-0565 • 501(c)(3) Nonprofit This is important because a fry cook who can’t season industrial sausage to a cer- tain level of palatability is a sad person. The eggs were slightly under-medium but this is forgivable if, and only if, the English muffins are hot and slathered properly in butter. Back at the counter, the red-ball-cap guy was talk- ing about the perfect place to build another Bi-Mart, which he thought was prob- ably Hailey, Idaho. Great diners serve two English muffins. Since one primary purpose of road- side diners is to nurture our generosity, serving up one lukewarm English muf- fin, or the sad spectacle of diced “country potatoes” in place of hashed browns, will never earn a gold spatula in Rullman’s Guide to Greasy Spoons. Outside, Sisters was com- ing to life and the booth next to me suddenly filled up with two businessmen and one laptop. Eavesdropping — “field-work” is the pre- ferred term — I gathered they were building a new company and fairly seri- ous about eventual world domination. That’s when the waitress asked the older one if he was wearing socks, which was an awkward opening but seemed to knock their talk of private jets and presidential suites down a peg. Which is another thing: there is both skill and art to waitressing a diner. That’s true of any restaurant, but in an old-school diner the wait- ress is a stand-up pro and can leave you either titillated or terrified — her choice. Meanwhile, talk at the counter had run full circle and was back to weather. The red-ball-cap guy — who was now fairly wired on caffeine and exaggerat- ing his gestures — brought up George Carlin’s “Hippy Dippy Weatherman” routine. This got my attention. They flirted with a con- sensus that the routine was brilliant except, I noticed, green ball-cap guy on the far end was holding out. He stared into his coffee cup until, after long inter- nal deliberation, he looked straight ahead at the pies and then said quietly: “He was whacked out all the time; but yes, he was a very funny man.” I was proud of green-ball-cap in that moment. I was proud of him because admitting such a thing in public was obvi- ously an act of personal bravery. It was as if a whistle had suddenly blown and he was now crawling out of a muddy emotional trench and going over the top with a knife in his teeth. Truth is, I’d been rooting for him all through my last savory bites, since he seemed to be tamp- ing down a growing list of differences with red ball-cap. I have no idea if any of that is true, but that’s how my mind wanders in restaurants. Mostly, I liked all the talk about the weather because it resurrected some of Al Sleet’s long-overlooked Hippy Dippy wisdom, which in our great new age of angry binary politics still has suction. Sleet admon- ished us, you may recall, to study the difference between a Canadian Low and a Mexican High, and optimistically suggested that “The weather will continue to change for a long, long, time.” Which was just the thing to write about over a really good breakfast.
