Published: April 21, 2008 09:50 am         

Come on back to the Waffle House

A Monster T-bone, eggs overeasy, hash browns, dinner rolls, and a waffle. Ice-cold Coca-Colas. Elvis Presley’s “American Trilogy” playing on the juke box. Good, often rowdy, company and conversation. Anywhere from 3 in the morning to dawn.

All for a few bucks.

The Waffle House.

Specifically, the Waffle House on Valdosta’s St. Augustine Road.

It was the last stop for many of the late nights with sunrise slipping into the rearview of my younger, wilder days.

The Waffle House Fridays nights and Saturday nights with Sunday morning coming down. At the time of night, those wee hours, when Valdosta’s bar crowds are soaking up the beer in their bellies with breakfast foods, followed by cops taking a break for coffee and a moment’s rest after seeing most of the roads cleared by those raucous bar crowds having made it home. The pre-dawn regulars of old men take the counter stools, reading fresh newspapers, drinking steaming cups of coffee. Old men who once gave us dirty looks transformed to the fellas saying hello with a nod, a passing of the baton from our conclusion of one day and their starting of a new one.

We’d run wild working the bars, throwing back a few, and then we’d slide our weary carcasses into a Waffle House booth. Hungry and loud. Some times a little too loud. We’d sing with Elvis on the juke box, or The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.” We’d whoop and holler. Share jokes with the waitresses and the cooks behind the counter. The working folks who’d ask if you wanted your usual? The usual: The Monster T-bone, eggs overeasy, hash browns, dinner rolls, and a waffle. Ice-cold Coca-Colas.

There was the time when I’d switched the usual to pork chops which the cook knew, but the waitress thought was still the Monster T-bone. Both orders eaten, nonetheless. All of it paid for. We tipped well. We stood in their defense against rowdier crews on occasion, and we visited with them when the crowds ebbed and the staff had a little breathing space before the early regulars came in with their fresh newspapers and another night squeezed out a new sunrise.



Time passes. A former bed time becomes the time to get up. My rowdy crowd is now three rambunctious sons. The girlfriend who once patiently put up with me eating T-bones and playing “American Trilogy” is my wife of many years. So many things left along the roadside of the years, and given that it was part of the late nights of my younger years, the Waffle House was left there, too.

But that’s just me.

The Waffle House, here, there, and everywhere, continues to serve customers not just in those wee hours of morning, but 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, 366 days during a leap year, forever and ever, amen.

There’s a reason why the late Lewis Grizzard wrote so many newspaper columns about the Waffle House. The food is good. It’s inexpensive. It arrives on your table fast. You can watch your order go from the waitress’ pad to the chef, watch him cook it up, see it slide onto the plate and return with your waitress, who is also ready to top off your Coke, sweet tea, or coffee.

There’s the sight of those black letters on neon yellow tiles spelling out W-A-F-F-L-E H-O-U-S-E and these letters have become as much a part of the South as Elvis singing “Dixie” in “American Trilogy” on the jukebox.

The Waffle House has been on the side of Southern roads since founders Tom Forkner and Joe Rogers Sr. started the first one in 1955. As close as their Valdosta-Lowndes County locations at Five Points, on West Hill Avenue, Madison Highway, Lake Park’s Lakes Boulevard, or one reporter’s personal favorite at 1302 N. St. Augustine Road.

Waffle House No. 680.

Walking in this Waffle House at 1:30 on a sunny afternoon is a far different vibe than those old days of the past. It’s probably the slowest time of any Waffle House’s day. The lunch crowd has left. It’s hours past breakfast and hours away from dinner and the late-night crowd. Perfect time for the manager and staff to visit. Afternoon sun or not, the memories return immediately.

The well-scrubbed rows of booths. The globed lighting fixtures hanging from the ceilings. The familiar intimacy of almost the entire restaurant in that rectangle, shoe-boxed structure. The hello and howdy of the waitresses as you enter the door. The snapping sound of eggs and meat on the grill. The jukebox to your right filled with that ever-growing list of Waffle House songs — yes, recordings of singers extolling the many virtues of the Waffle House, and “American Trilogy” still there after all these years.

And the intoxicating smell of waffles. A Waffle House waffle. A comforting, alluring aroma that calls like a siren to even the most devout appetite plans of eating only an egg, some bacon, toast, and, and, well, could you add a waffle to that order, too. Hypnotic.

There, behind the counter, pouring the waffle batter, working the grill, is Frank Cook, the store manager. Cooking like the last time I saw him several years ago, turning to say hello as he slides food from his spatula to a plate.

Frank has been with the Waffle House for more than 20 years. He left cooking and managing a store for several years to work in human resources in Waffle House’s corporate offices. But he missed the people: the waitresses, cooks, shift managers, the customers and the regulars.

“We get all different kinds of people,” he says. “We have the attorney in a suit and tie and the guy straight off the road.”

And those folks are as close to being just over his shoulder almost anywhere they sit in the Waffle House. They can watch Frank make their food and he’s close enough to have a conversation with them. For some regulars, all they have to do is walk in the door, and their greeting is “The usual?” “The usual.” A greeting and an order taken in just a few words, and the food’s on the table a few minutes later.

And that’s any time, any day, no matter what else is closed, the Waffle House is open. Middle of the night. Sunday. Thanksgiving. Monday. Christmas. 9:37 p.m. Thursday. Yom Kippur. Those doors are open.

Christmas is actually the St. Augustine Waffle House’s busiest day of the year, Frank Cook says. “You remember how crowded Friday and Saturday nights can be,” he says, “well, it’s like that all day on Christmas. Everything else is closed. We’re the only thing open, and there are a lot of travelers on Christmas day. We’ll have a line out the door all day.”

This Waffle House closed for a day once. Once. The parking lot was resurfaced a couple of years ago. Regulars were warned in advance of the closing. Signs were placed on the door.

Managing a place that never closes sounds like more than a full-time job. Even though his official hours are about 7 a.m. to 3:30 or 4 p.m., as manager, Frank Cook is on call all hours of every day. The trick, he says, is hiring people who are trustworthy, know what needs doing, and can do it, “so you don’t get those calls in the middle of the night.”

And despite personal recollections of a wilder past, that’s just a dimension of the Waffle House during a few late-night hours most weekends from then to now. Overall, the Waffle House is very much a family atmosphere. There are regulars with traditions of bringing young sons and daughters to the Waffle House on Saturday mornings. There are family regulars who visit the Waffle House before or after church on Sundays. There are regulars who take their lunch breaks during the work week.

“It’s a family atmosphere,” Frank Cook says of the Waffle House. “You get to know people and know their kids. A lot of people come here for the conversation and the atmosphere as much as they do the food.

“The biggest compliment I ever got was when this guy said that he comes here to eat because it’s like sitting in his house, eating in his kitchen. That’s just a great compliment. We want people to feel comfortable here like they’re visiting with someone at their kitchen table.”

Preparing to leave, I visit the juke box. Many of the songs remain the same. That’s good. “American Trilogy.” “Sweet Home Alabama.” These tunes would often still be playing on those faraway mornings as I walked out of the Waffle House, trading Elvis for Brother Benny Daniels’ local gospel radio show “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” on the truck radio.

Turning from the jukebox, to my surprise, Daniels is seated at a counter stool eating lunch. Smiling, I consider sharing how in my wilder days I’d hear him speak of change and redemption after a long night. I consider telling him how those changes can come to a life.

But he’s eating lunch, eating that good Waffle House food, and I don’t want to interrupt. So, I say, “Brother Benny, how’re you doing?” “Good,” he answers. And I say my good-byes to him and to Frank.

Climbing into my same old truck, I think it’s good to have given up some of those old ways. But the Waffle House shouldn’t have been one of them. I should have traded late night T-bones for a mid-morning Saturday breakfast or a weekday lunch. Maybe I’ll do that. I should do that and have one of Frank’s fine meals topped with a Waffle House waffle. And maybe Brother Benny will be there again one afternoon, and I’ll share with him a tale of redemption.

Just like we were sitting in one of our kitchens.