The Cracker Barrel

True happiness abounds on all sides. Children all over the face of this house could be heard playing well into the night, even when admonished to Go To Sleep. And it seems these same children have awoken in the bright early dawn to resume the joyful delights of playing with other people's (their cousins in this case) awesome toys. As I lie here I have put a sparkly star in one child's hair, and been called to look upon a light saber. I know I said it yesterday, but Everying is truely and completely Awesome. The only thing not awesome is that every single adult has been dragging her, and his, heels into the plushly carpeted floor in every manner possible to avoid the whole question of swimming. Why don't adults want to swim? Why is it that every child wants to swim all day long but the adults sit there, their eyes glazed over, Not Wanting To Swim. It is one of the great mysteries of the adult, the child standing, tummy sticking out, eyes narrowed, lip quivering, trying to discern what sort of reality this might be. There is the pool. There are the suits. There is the warm weather. What on earth could be the cause of so much delay, so much, “maybe in an hour or so, dear”, “maybe in the morning,” and so on and so forth.

So anyway, Cracker Barrel. First of all, it was The Golden Touch Restaurant in Oregon that was so alluringly interesting that eventually my mother and I went trepidatiously in and ate heavy grease laden sandwiches. (More adverbs! More! More!) When I say that I have been driving past the Cracker Barrel all these years, wondering what it looks like inside, it's not that I think I'm going to be awaiting some mind blowing culinary experience. Rather, there is something peculiarly American about restaurants like The Golden Touch, and The Cracker Barrel, and maybe even The Texas Roadhouse, or whatever it's called. They promise a glow of happiness and delight. They offer not just salad, but soup Or salad. They are cheerful and, well, American. And, in Cracker Barrel's case, well well marketed.

As we drove up, Matt confessed to never having gone into one either. Have trouble believing this but he isn't in the habit of lying to me, so I only raised my eye brows in surprise. The children were hysterical with anxiety. Why couldn't we just go to the Pancake Barn (that's my name for IHOP) or that waffle barn thing (also new to me)? Would there be anything to eat at all? Would there be pancakes? “I don't know,” I said over and over, “I think you will be able to eat anything your heart desires.”

And boy was I right. What a child wants, more than anything, is pancakes. Lots and lots of carb laden pancakes with lots and lots of syrup. And to drink, sugar in a cup. And in this, the Cracker Barrel did not disappoint. Not at all. First there was the little peg game. Then the milk with sugar and the juice with sugar. Then the pancakes with sugar. And the biscuits with butter and jam filled with sugar. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Before any of that, to get to the restaurant part, you have to walk through a store full of candy, toys and little objects that call out to you, that, in some cases, have your own name printed right on them, beckoning you to stop and just look, just for a minute.

At the end of an hour and a half, as we were shoving the children back into the car and yelling at them to buckle themselves up, and stop fighting, Matt confessed that the bill had been quite low, and that, when a couple of your children can eat a plate of pancakes and then top it off with some biscuits, and the sausage off of someone else's plate, it might not be a bad option along the road, I understood again, as I have been more and more, that this is really where I live, and that strangerly distance is more and more being taken out of my grasp. But that's ok, because my coffee cup was never even half empty. And sugar washes out of little dresses pretty easily. So pass the syrup and Welcome to America.