Blue-plate special (courtesy of Wikipedia)
Early Sunday morning, coming home from our camping trip, my son and I covered better than 60 miles of U.S. Route 250 from Charlottesville to Richmond. In that entire ride there wasn’t a single non-chain restaurant open. As we drove we waxed poetic about the wonders of mom’n’pop, truck-stop-style restaurants; about breakfasts served 24 hours, perfect flat-top hash browns, bottomless heavy white coffee mugs, bologna burgers, and blue-plate specials.
It was a great trip, and the perfect ending would have been to sit on a stool, ten feet from the grill, sipping coffee and chatting with the short-order cook like we used to do in the old days. Hungry and defeated, we gave in and ate at a chain pancake house. It was a brightly lit and sterile place devoid of character, a pathetic imitation of the originals it has replaced.
Robert Mitchell Jr. 