Breakfast in Arkansas

It was just breakfast in Arkansas, but it was so much more to me. Here today with my boys, we enjoyed a Pilot Truck stop breakfast together. Each of us chose exactly what we wanted for ourselves. I could tell just being near them this was an unforgettable moment in time, one I am sure they will think about long after I am gone. But it was so much more to me.

This breakfast was a merging of the past, actually many past lives of mine and the here and now. From solo trips across the US as a young man, then important military missions spanning years of history, to my years as a civilian over-the-road truck driver, the truck stop breakfast overlooking a day of unknown adventure was a dimension of its own. Here today, I could tell my boys were feeling it.

In my culinary brain, there is nothing great about this food, but I can tell you as a former service member, there is much worse food out there.

You might think the worst food I ever ate had to be in Saudi Arabia, but no it was not. The "absolute bad in every way conceivable meal" was at Lexington Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky in 1992. 

Here our own company cooking crew had access to a full-scale military mess hall, that’s a “commercial kitchen” for you Civs. What they did to the food touched upon all of the aspects of culinary senses, violating them in ways impossible to imagine. Visually, not resembling food. Flavor-wise, there should have been an award for making matter that food somehow not taste like anything. Aromatically, dead. Texture, various forms of hard, mush, and burnt.  Even Temperature-wise, warm to already in the garbage can cold. Here it was,  "food as a weapon", I have heard the stories told while marching and singing cadence, this was the Army way.

I will never forget coming in from our mission of hauling 1.1D explosives into the base, a very long ride from Pennsylvania, looking forward to a hot delicious meal. The food was inedible and as I sat at the table across from my friend Nick, I plunged my fingers into my luke-warm coffee cup. Taking a page from the old Palmolive commercials with Madge, I complained to Nick, “LOOK! I am soaking in it!!!”

*Periodic Disclaimer: 

I apologize to all the kindly folk who are reading for my flagrant digression from the topic and for all of the emotionally charged sarcasm that inevitably comes with said detour. And now, back to our story. 

So the truck stop food is not great, but you go in, you eat it, and you carry that one large coffee out with you. That coffee, my friends, is your best friend for the next 47 miles. You step outside the door and it hits you! The air of a new and different place. Your day is about to come and for the most part, you have no idea what is coming. You only know what direction you are headed. 

Whether it is the pink morning fog in Oklahoma, the weighty air of Arkansas promising a brutally hot steamy day, or the utter synchronized chaos of old town Chicago. The screaming severity of West Virginia, the feeling of possibilities in Alabama, or the frost-kissed trees of Maine in October. It hits you and you know that you are really alive.