I always make it a point to try to stop at this place to eat a few times while traveling in the States, as there is nothing better than having their breakfast plate, which includes two eggs, hickory-smoked bacon, a sausage patty and your choice of country ham or sugar-cured ham with hash brown casserole, fried apples and cinnamon biscuits. You can’t forget the delicious gravy, grits and buttermilk biscuits.You can’t get much more southern than that!
When you walk into this family restaurant chain you feel like you just walked back in time or into an antique or junk store. Thousands of artifacts including dusty farm tools, metal business signs, family photographs, hand-crank telephones, cast-iron cookware and old-fashioned toys are the decor on the walls and ceilings. You could say that the restaurant chain has almost become a museum of Americana.
If it was not such a popular place with the buzz of people and service all around, you’d think you had entered “The Andy Griffith Show,” where widower Sheriff Andy and his son Opie live with Andy’s Aunt Bee in Mayberry, N.C. Set in the 1960s, the television program is about a sheriff with virtually no crimes to solve, and most of Andy’s time is spent philosophizing and calming down his cousin Deputy Barney. They have rocking chairs there too!
When my mother passed away, I dismantled her wooden rocking chair and told my brothers that I was shipping it to Turkey. They thought I was crazy! I packed up the 13 pieces, and shipped it to Turkey. The customs officials, who were men, also did not know what to think of it when they saw it. I could tell they thought I was another crazy foreigner. Having this rocking chair, even though it is still in pieces in my closet waiting to be assembled, is all about being sentimental.
It represents a time when things were simplem and it belonged to my mom.
Turkey does not have a chain restaurant like this that I know of, but there are many privately owned places here that could compare. Places that still reflect the simple life and slower pace. However, these are gradually being lost -- even in Turkey.
History shows that things have evolved and in many cases been improved upon.
Turkey has changed drastically in the world of technology.
Out of necessity, you could say that I was dragged kicking and screaming into the computer and technology age. When I first started teaching, I remember using slate boards and chalk in the classroom.
My first computer that I bought in Turkey was expensive. If I recall it was an Amstrad, and its operating system was DOS. It was replaced by another and junked years ago. Now computers are a gazillion times faster.
But so is life!
The problem with getting a computer was I then could be more easily in touch with others and them with me.
Have you ever noticed that often in an e-mail there is a request for you to do something? You know, things like send a book here or give a speech there or attend a meeting…
Although I rely on a mobile phone for staying in touch, I dislike it just as much as I do computers.
Granny’s rocking chair served two purposes. For children, it was a place of security on the lap of mom or grandma, and for us adults, it brought relaxation and simplicity.
Life in the more urban centers in Turkey is undergoing major changes. It seems that simplicity for many has become sophisticated and rushed. These days it is nice if you can have a charming sense of small-town life as well as a shrewd sense of life in general.
Many of you who have been in Turkey for a while came because you loved the innocence and simplicity.
I think I need to take a step back and find some time to get my mom’s rocking chair assembled. If I have not done this by the end of the year, it could be my New Year’s resolution for 2010.
When I get a chance, I will do it and then settle back and enjoy.
“To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.” -- Charles Dudley Warner
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