good service.

I find that my best pictures are the ones that I take accidentally. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the manual focus and exposure and changing settings that I don't even understand to take the same picture over and over to have it turn out blurry. Then I just happen to turn and shoot without even looking through the viewfinder and I get something great. Well, pretty good anyway.

This picture is somewhere in between.

I took about ten versions of this picture while I was sitting at Jim's Grill waiting for my roast beef special. Jim's Grill is on the edge of Yadkinville on Highway 601, across from the funeral home. I pass by on my way to class in Dobson, and I've always been a fan of that sign. I wanted a picture of the sign through the dirty window, framed by the cheap curtains. The reason this one is the best is because of the little fly on the window. I didn't even know a fly was on the window until I looked at the pictures much, much later. But when I saw it, the anxiety I felt about eating by myself in a strange restaurant and conspicuously taking pictures from my table was all worth it.

The sign at Jim's Grill is picture-worthy enough, just because it's classic, down to the neon letters at the bottom advertising "GOOD SERVICE." But the reason that I like this picture so much is because it seems to encompass the whole feeling of Jim's Grill: dirty, faded, down-home, unsanitary, good service.

It's really too bad that the food isn't very good. And the service? Well, it wasn't too bad, particularly considering that my waitress might have been born to a pair of first cousins. It was all worth it for the pictures. However, I have the pictures now, and so I see no reason to go back. There's a reason there's a funeral home across the street.