Regulars

Picture a regular. An older gentleman, salt and pepper hair gently blowing in the breeze. He rests on a chair perched outside his favorite cafe, hidden in a corner of some mountain town he calls home. His wise and stoic gaze peers down across the pages of a weighty book from behind clairvoyant spectacles. The waiters know him by name and how he takes his coffee, black with splenda on the side, and each new face entering the joint brings a novel perspective and raised eyebrow to his face.

But instead of a mid morning coffee, make it an evening queso. Instead of an older gentleman, make it a girl in her 20s. She sits outside at a wooden table, fall weather brushing its silky puffs across her cheeks. Innocent conversations drift her way, adding intrigue to the enveloping ambiance. One boy tells another to make a move on that girl. A couple deals a deck of cards in silence so as not to beckon another word after 40 years of marriage. A truck driver maneuvers his 18 wheeled machinery past the patio without a second glance from the unassuming diners.

As for the girl, the waiters don’t know her name or her order. Don’t know she brings her friends there every chance she can get. Don’t know she’d walk 500 miles to eat their beloved cheese and chips. But, what the girl does know is that every little chip is a flake of heaven, every all-day breakfast taco tastes of good morning fuel before a swim meet in the dead of summer. Do the customers know that this is Texas? That it’s sacred ground they’re walking on? That people smile cause it’s "Damn Good" and no one blinks when you say y’all? The endearing dichotomy between fast food and fancy, but Torchys got it right.

Maybe they’ll learn her name, but maybe it’s better if they don’t. Let her reminisce in the Damn Good spice of life, slice of Texas in Charlottesville, Virginia.