The sun was out and the skies were clear…somewhere.  Here, however, it was grey as a dirty Goodyear radial without a whitewall.  Everything was wet – it wasn’t raining but there was a dampness like the earth was in a cold sweat because she knew what the day held.

And the sounds were gone.  The moisture soaked up the vibration and everything was dull and muffled.  There was action. But it was a television with the volume turned down… or seen from another room…or maybe broken altogether.

Don stood on the corner at the park watching the traffic light change; not seeing the colors.  He unconsciously shrugged deeper into his wind breaker.  He should have worn something heavier but hadn’t thought about it, wasn’t thinking about it now.  He was lost elsewhere…supposition…maybe suspicion…no, thought, yes it was thought.

Ann was upset.  They had been seeing each other exclusively for eight months.  Well, they saw other things like traffic lights and ice cream trucks, but not other people.  Actually, they saw other people, they just didn’t see people of the opposite sex.  Naturally, they saw them, but…well, you know.  Things had been going great and Don was beginning to think she was the one.  She was perfect.  She was pretty, thoughtful and caring.  Ann made the best strawberry preserves in the state and in the bedroom she was, well, a little messy, what with the strawberry preserves but…  She could bake a mean lasagna, fix a crumpled pick up fender and her theories on astrophysics were well known.  They had so much in common – he liked lasagna, too.

So why was she mad…angry…maybe upset?  Was it infidelity?  Inconsideration?  Some other “in” word?

Don couldn’t figure it.

She was fine when they met for lunch a couple days ago.  She had rambled on about the new spring fashions and their application as casual handball wear.  He was positive he hadn’t snored but couldn’t be sure his eyes hadn’t glazed over.  He hadn’t said anything and he didn’t forget to leave a tip or pay the bill.  No, that wasn’t it.

It began to drizzle and Don lifted his hood.  A cop watching him for signs of vagrancy frowned and drove off.  Apparently standing catatonic in the rain with your hood up is not a vagrant activity, even if you do have one foot in a puddle.  Don didn’t notice.  He was still lost.

Things seemed alright when they went to dinner and the monster truck opera on Friday.  They talked about crocheting and the new automobile models, quantum physics and the existence of invisible matter in the universe.  He loved conversing with Ann.  After all, he liked crocheting, too.

Everything had been fine…good…even okay, but…  She was cool when he took her home.  She didn’t kiss him goodnight.  She slammed the door in his face and he heard the bolts “click” into place.  That was unusual – she usually didn’t use all the locks.

So whatever it was, it had happened that night.  She didn’t eat her pie at coffee before they went home and didn’t say much after…  Wait!  He had commented on her hair.  It was odd, he had thought, but he didn’t actually say how he felt about it.  What did he say…?  “Unusual”, he had called it.  That was actually a euphemism…an understatement…a lie.  No, it was a euphemism.

He wanted to tell her that it looked like a half of a Princess Leia, like a bun on an old lady with no sense of balance.  She looked like she should lean to one side so she didn’t fall over.  But he didn’t say these things.  She was still beautiful, after all.  It was a temporary thing, a surface affect and it wasn’t important.

Besides, he should have known better than to make a non-positive comment about the way she looked.  There were, after all, rules which applied to these things:  you don’t ask a woman how old she is, you don’t degrade her clothing or her hair and you never say anything about weight.

Somewhere in the distance a church bell was ringing.  The sound filtered its way past Don’s reverie…remembrance…reflection.  He looked up in time to see Ann walking toward him, a thin fence of water dripping off her umbrella , separating her from the light rain.  It was like a welded wire fence…actually, it was more like a picket fence – with some boards missing.  Of course, there were no cross-support rails or…  Aw, jeez, it was just water!

Don looked into her eyes.  “Hi” was all he said.

“Hello, Don”, she said, more in reply than in greeting, her eyes focused on the ground in front of her.  He stood outside the umbrella, outside her space, and looked in at her.

“Ann, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I certainly didn’t want you to take it that way.  I…I was outta line and I apologize.”

“It’s alright,” she said, her eyes lifting, her face softening.  “I shouldn’t have been so sensitive.  I just thought you didn’t like the way I looked.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he said, honestly taken aback by the idea.  “I love the way you look.  It’s just that it was…different, is all.”

She lifted the front of her umbrella and he stepped inside her personal shelter.  They shared a smile as the relief rushed through each of them and their eyes locked as the tension subsided.

Don stepped close to her.  He lowered his hood and reached around her.  Ann looked into his face.  Her eyes widened and her eyebrows arched as she leaned back to broaden her view.

“That looks like a crew-cut!  Did you get a haircut or join the Marines!”

                        “Where do you want to eat?”

“I don’t care…  Where do you want to eat?”

“Anywhere you want to go is okay with me.”

“No, really!  Anywhere you want is fine.  What do you feel like having?”

“I don’t CARE!  You know I’m not that picky!”

“Well…okay.  How about Bob’s Brat Barn?”

“Nah, I really don’t feel like that tonight.”

I’m not even going to waste time or column space asking you if this sounds familiar.  Of course, in simply taking the time to tell you I wasn’t going to ask you, I actually wasted the time, but these diatribes need to be a certain length, anyway, so that’s not a big deal.  At any rate, if you have ever had any type of relationship in which you engaged in the frequent modern ritual of supporting the food based service industry because you’re too tired to fire up the old microwave or just don’t want to load the dishwasher yet again, I know you have engaged in this conversation… Probably taking both positions (although hopefully not at the same time).

In order to help ease this type of stress on your particular association, I am here for my first installment of Food Critics Pantry – which must be largely empty or the food critic wouldn’t have to go out to eat at places he found it necessary to complain about.  Still, Food Critics Pantry is the first name that came to my head so we’ll just keep that.  Now, if I were going to write a regular weekly food column, I would call it, maybe, Food Critics Knife.  That way restaurateurs could check each week to see who got “knifed.”  Or possibly Food Critics Fork, so they could check to see who got…  Well, you can draw that one out for yourself, but I’m kind of missing the plate I’m dishing up here, metaphorically speaking, so…

For my first approach I decided to critique somewhere you can go for a good meal at a good price.  An everyday kind of place or maybe a nice spot for a casual night on the town.  The main and primary requirement, good food. Using this as my starting point, I studied contemporary folk wisdom and conducted a widespread poll, which was then subjected to an intense statistical analysis (degree of accuracy:  + or – 97%), and determined the perfect place to begin:

the great American truck stop!

Well, think about it.  You always hear how the food at truck stops is really good and the prices are reasonable and the people are just, ya’ know, regular folks  and…  Well, I always heard that.  Maybe it was bad movies from the 60’s or country music or the crowd I hang with, though my presence does not normally generate anything resembling a crowd.  Since I was out on the road researching anyway, I felt it was a good place to start – or stop, as it were.

The first point I need to give to truck stops:  they normally seem to have a good cup of coffee.  I found this early on in my research.  You stop for fuel and maybe have a salad or a piece of pie and a cup of coffee…  usually 2 cups or maybe 3 because,  as regular, non-flavored, un-flame toasted, not grill roasted, mountain grown coffee goes, theirs is pretty good.

This seems as innocent as a walk in the park on a sunny day…with your significant other…on their lunch break.  When their spouse is out of town.  Okay, no!  It’s as innocent as a little child’s smile…as he stands looking up at you.  Holding stolen cookies behind his back.  Alright, let’s just say it seems really innocent and leave it at that.  Under the surface, however, this is as nefarious as running commercials for expensive toys during Saturday morning cartoon shows just before Christmas!  What happens?  You pay for your pie and 4 cups of coffee, hop in your vehicle and re-enter the nations traffic veins; refreshed, alert and ready to go.  An hour later you develop a problem you were trying to ignore:  Those 5 cups of coffee you enjoyed kept you alert while driving and are now keeping you alert while frantically searching for a rest area, gas station or another truck stop.  So while they get a point for good coffee, I have to take it back because of the underhanded way they use it to promote business by forcing you to stop at the next truck stop.

Upon entering the average truck stop, your attention is taken by the surroundings, the layout, the ambiance… The feeling you get from the combination of decor, smells, sounds and the people around you.  Naturally, the decorating in these businesses differs from one to another but they normally have an underlying down-home theme and are either decorated in an early American country motif or furnished with stuff the found in the American countryside.  The general effect is that of sitting in your Aunt’s kitchen – provided your Aunt isn’t too particular.  The result they’re looking for is a surrounding which will make most people feel comfortable and relaxed.  This is an excellent approach, since people enjoy dining in a familiar and calming atmosphere which allows them to relax and enjoy the taste of the food as well as assisting in digestion.  Since this is, in America, a widely accepted setting, it will draw more customers from a wider socioeconomic base (this is modern business jargon meaning “people who have different amounts of money”).  While this is definitely a positive thing for the cash register, it sometimes affects the atmosphere of the restaurant.  At one of the locations I stopped, there was a gentleman… No, he would have to be classified as a “guy”… Who was vocally attempting to clear his throat of some phlegm.  His wife was with him, but was apparently used to this because she largely ignored him.  As they left I noted they were wearing matching jackets with the seal and name of the state of North Dakota embroidered on the back.  I figure these were likely a gift from their hometown chamber of commerce – in Minnesota:

“Here you go, Harvey.  You folks have won these jackets in a random drawing by,

um, the North Dakota tourism department.  You make sure you wear these while your on

vacation now, will ya’?”

Another place I stopped had wonderful food and a decor in western country style, which can be differentiated from eastern or mid-American country style by the wall clock, which is set to mountain time.  As I concentrated on my “country style” biscuits I was bothered by a peripheral clicking sound.  Apparently, the fellow two tables down felt that it was safer to clip his fingernails in his booth rather than on the highway at 65 miles per hour.  While I tended to agree with this argument, I lost my appetite while searching my plate for random free-flying fingernail particles.  In light of these experiences I concluded that in terms of “atmosphere,” these truck stops are not vacuums, meaning they contain air you can breath.

In concluding the overall rating of truck stops in general I must say that every truck stop I frequented, no matter where it was or what time of day, had a large area where you could very easily park many big vehicles.  Aside from that, you’re on your own.

Happy dining.