Life On the Road - Middle America

I’m sitting yet again in the breakfast area of another chain motel, eating sausages that I am convinced are filled with sawdust and using a plastic fork to chase runny gravy over a mound of hockey puck biscuits – listening to an old BeeGee’s song over the motel speakers while watching a weather channel that still can’t seem to find the state of Mississippi on their map.

I’m not in a downtown area or an area with ongoing construction work, so most of my fellow diners are tourist types: older women with short blue hair and light blouses sitting across the table from their baldheaded husbands wearing blue jeans and off brand shoes, a tattooed fellow hunched over a bowl of Cheerios, a young couple who appear to be flirting with Goth but have yet to make a full commitment. I suppose we are a fair representation of modern middle America.

I head back for that second cup of coffee when a couple walks in with two young children in tow.  She’s short and stout, pretty and pleasant. The kids are yawning and still dressed in pajamas. He’s a big fellow, tall, built like a linebacker with a butch haircut. The American eagle on his t-shirt stretched to the extreme across his broad back. Ex-military, I am guessing. He looked like a man who could be intimidating at will.

He wasn’t. We exchanged “good mornings” as he waited for me to finish pouring my coffee, They chose a table near me and without intent, I watched as he catered to his family – helping his wife herd the kids through the food choices at the bar, bringing juice, utensils and napkins as needed.

Someone had changed the channel to one of the national news networks. It doesn’t seem to matter which one anymore.  I watch halfheartedly, my head slightly cocked toward the screen. I notice he is doing the same while waiting for his wife to sit down at the table.  We watch as breathless newscasters pontificate about the price of Taylor Swift tickets and the latest buzz about the Barbie movie. Nothing about the war in Ukraine, the economy, the border or true politics.
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Then the screen lost the little attention that I had committed to it. I watched this young family do something that you don’t see much anymore. They held hands and said grace in the breakfast nook of a Holiday Inn Express. It was a good morning.