Hookers, the Waffle House, Friends, and a Dead Trappist

Birthday Memories

Good morning, dear reader.

It’s two hours before sunrise, and we’re preparing to leave our hotel, a sub-standard Hampton Inn, passable but the weariest of all our stays of the past four months on the road. Fifteen minutes ago, in a ragged patch of unkept grass, not so much a lawn as a field in waiting, I was beset by youthful memories.

I’d like to tell you that we were bathed in starlight, but instead, it was in the lonely burn of the yellow lights of a Waffle House across the parking lot. A lone diner was seated at the counter with a cup of coffee in front of him and his head in his hands. I found myself wondering if he had yet to be home from a Saturday night or if he was beginning his Sunday.

We are in Indiana headed for Kentucky, and the last time I ate at a Waffle House was when I was a student at the University of Kentucky over forty years ago. Back then, when I was full of beer, trouble, and mischief, the restaurant chain was a thing of wonder to me. Waffles, at any time of day, …