Americana

"welcome to Cracker Barrel!"

streaming Muddy through my
iPod, "Train Fare Home Blues",
i'm the one member
of this wolfpack possessing no
Lebanon heme. it's no
consequence in the stillframe shots
day-to-day.

they and a blue-shirted family of strangers say i'm welcome.
 
amerafrican rhythms snake into
my eardrums, wireless ghosthowls
of dead-'n-gone Mississippi jukegods.
and Waters' eureka of it being
no crime to carry brownskin
notes into the white man's
home jump to mind.

table for six, five-minute wait.

trademark: half restaurant, half store,
all country.  truer words never spoken,
i browse through merchandise unmistakably
Dixie and Midwestern.
laptop-large Hershey bars, assorted distractions
for Stepford youth made in China. and sniff
my way through Yankee candles, remembering
how my Appalachian grandparents never crossed
a border and achieved downhome with
callused hands, lumbago and a Bible by
their bedside. 

exclusive albums from Dolly and Kenny, a century
of music 'tween 'em with fifty large in botox
and airbrushing.  it sure do take a ton
of jack to look that cheap.


next in line.  i feel more welcome already.

note more smiling ethnic folk there
these days, waiting tables or to
be served. lilywhite got kinda
legislated outta the swellin' Bible Belt
bottom line a ways back, made
them proprieters add a hug to the menu.
they guarantee colorblindness save
for green now.   unless, of course,
you sang at the Opry here and there.


now we sit, preparin' for comfort food in hardbacked wood chairs.

 
the staff's attentive, adhesive to
our requests for iced tea and breadgoods
lickety-split. i already know my selection:
chicken-fried steak, that ol' Tejas
legend, brown gravy, mashed taters, green
beans, corn and fried apples.  take me back
to my ancestral kitchen.

i'll eat like a king while wonderin'
to myself if Obama ever
had to wait behind a crew of anonymous
wonderbreads before aspiring to
President. 

my girlfriend nudges me to
remove my Bluetooth, banishing
Chicago from the table.  i comply
just as our feast is laid out,
and we grab utensils, pray
and prepare for our Rockwell
portrait with
one catch:

white cream gravy.