job offer.

Mom's Home Cookin' in Boonville, North Carolina is right on Highway 601 on the edge of town. Of course, this being Boonville, every place is on the edge of town. I stop in for a bite on my way back from Dobson because I've been passing by this place four times a week for months now and I've decided that it was time to give Mom a try. There are easily two dozen tables, but only a few are occupied in one corner of the room. Obviously, Mom's is a place where you go to eat on the same night every week and then stick around for a cup of coffee and conversation with the other Tuesday night folks. I'm new here, so I sit down at a table for four by the door. Then I look around expectantly for a menu or a waitress or some indication of how things work around here.

A woman from the small cluster of people extracts herself and shuffles over to the counter. She's maybe seventy years old and is wearing house shoes. She brings me a menu from the stack on the counter, and I can only assume that I am looking at Mom herself. Her voice is gravelly as she asks me what she can get for me. I ask for a glass of sweet tea. She writes down "tea" on her pad, either because she figures she'll remember that I wanted it sweetened or because in Boonville, NC, there is only one kind of tea. I had ordered the drink with the hopes that she would go get it and give me a minute to pick out some food, but she stood there waiting for me to make a selection. Most people who came into Mom's probably had the menu memorized already, so they knew what they wanted; plus, walking did seem to be a slow process for her.

Feeling pressured by her hovering over me, I picked out the first thing off the specials board: Homemade Chicken Salad Sandwich with chips and tea - $3.95. I like chicken salad, but I hesitate to order it in unfamiliar place, because chicken salad done improperly can be really bad. Lettuce? Tomato? Mayo? Yes, yes, yes, I said, and then Mom slowly made her way back to the kitchen. I heard a bell ding. Then she came back to me with a glass of tea and a straw.

"You're a pretty girl."

"Oh, uh, thank you."

"You're not lookin' for a job now, are you?"

"Oh, no, thank you. I have a job."

And then she shuffled on back to sit down with the regulars. I was a little flushed at the unexpected compliment from a stranger and also curious about the impromptu job offer. I could only assume that these were just friendly country people who liked to hire pretty waitresses because a smile from a nice, pretty girl can make the everyday troubles a little lighter, not that Mom's Home Cookin' had some sort of brothel in the back. I thought about working here while I waited for my sandwich. I am southern and have waiting experience, so I am qualified to pour coffee and talk to old men about the weather. And yet it would be completely unlike the restaurant experiences I had thus far. I was used to waiting on tourists and well-to-do retirees. These were salt-of-the-earth people, the kind of people who wouldn't ask me whether I was still in school, but whether I was married or had children yet. It would be so much more real working here than in fine dining.

My sandwich and chips are brought by a girl about my age coming from out of the kitchen. She asks if there's anything else I'll be needing at the moment, then goes back to the kitchen, pushing a cart laden with dirty dishes in front of her. I wonder if she's the chef, too. I'm still stuck on that job offer, so I try to decide if she got hired on looks and if she is prettier than I am. I determine that she might be very attractive, but at the end of a day's work at Mom's is not the time to tell. I notice something else: it's hard to tell because of her loose t-shirt, but I can tell that she is pregnant, probably about 4 months along.

The chicken salad is excellent, every bit as good as the $6.95 (chips, but no drink included) one I used to serve at Vintner's. I would be proud if I could make chicken salad of this quality.

An old man goes up to the counter to pay his check. The girl rings him up, $1.05. I assume he just had a cup of coffee, drunk slowly to give him time to listen to the other folks. He talks to the girl as she checks him out. She says that her New Year's resolution is to just have a good year, because she hadn't had one of those in a while. I was sad for her in this tiny restaurant, about to have a baby, stuck in Boonville, NC, resolving for her life to at least not be quite so bad this year. And here I was just passing through on the way back to my carefree and well-paid existence, fortunate enough to have been born to my parents and not to hers.

I left her a 50% tip, realizing that an extra dollar to her was a lot more than it was to me. Even when you wait on tourists, it sometimes is the generous stranger who keeps your head up on a long day. I silently wished her luck as I walked out, realizing that a person can be happy in any life, but glad that I didn't have to try it in hers.