While I was on my week long road trip to survey weather stations and visit the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC last week, I encountered lots of signs. Restaurant signs, road signs, signs from above, you name it. I think I must have passed 100 Bojangles restaurants and/or road signs. Bojangles is a popular southern chicken and biscuits restaurant. One though, really got my attention.
But please read on for the real “mother of all signs” I encountered.
Then there was Cracker Barrel and Waffle House…
Cracker barrel has an interesting marketing slogan on their supply trucks:
Yeah, I drove some of those….
On good advice from my readers, I avoided every one of these I saw:
This place is the southern version of Bob’s Big Boy and Frisch’s, good eats and a great breakfast bar. I didn’t try the wine though.
There were some other restaurant signs that I didn’t quite understand…
And there were some signs that I often wished I had for use when moderating this blog:
Then there were some signs that really spoke to the mission I was on:
And then there were others that I encountered that didn’t have a hint of southern hospitality at all…
I saw a lot of these at gas pumps, and given how I feel about biofuels, I drove to the next stations where I didn’t have to burn food to finish my trip:
I had mentioned that after surveying too many weather stations at sewage treatment plants that I needed a long shower, but when I saw this while I briefly toyed with the idea, I just didn’t see how it would change anything. I’d just be trading one smell for another.
There was one sign though that left a lasting impression on me, and it requires just a little bit of explanation.
When I was driving in Northwestern North Carolina, I went through many small towns and country roads that had small churches, I must have passed 200 during my trip. One thing I noticed is that pastors in these towns tend to try to out do each other with sermon topics on their front signs. I’d drive into a little town, and I’d see one sign advertising salvation, the next would have salvation plus breakfast, the next might have salvation, confession, a quote from the Bible, and a spaghetti feed, while the fourth might just have a zinger that would put all the others to shame.
This was one of those:
Now a caveat, the mountain road I was traveling on when I saw this had no shoulder and there was a semi truck right behind me. I looked for a place to pull over and turn around, and didn’t see one coming up, I couldn’t even pull over to let the truck pass. Five miles later I was still stuck and gave up on the idea.
Today I Google image searched to see if I could find an image where I could recreate the message, and found this neat web site called the Church Sign Generator, the output of which you see above. The sign and message was real, and didn’t look much different from this example except the top had something about Sunday’s service which I didn’t include because I didn’t get a good look at it.
We should all take this message home with us and live it.
Sad that in all those pics there are only chain restaurants. Reconstituted glop and thawed entrees, trucked a thousand miles across country, heated up and plopped on a paper plate by some highschool kid who forgot to wash his hands, for your eating enjoyment. I avoid these ‘better living through chemicals’ places whenever I can. Give me a good ol’ mom and pop greasy spoon anyday over any of these sorry excuses for food.
The ‘best’ sign I have ever seen outside a business wasn’t in the South at all. Years ago I was driving through East St Louis on the way to Scott, AFB and passed a burger joint with a sign that read “Burgers 14 cents each – or 7 for a dollar.”
I didnt even know that Shoneys existed. And WATCH out for all those waffle houses!!! They can spell disaster!
rjhend, it’s a bit prejudiced to assume that a chain restaurant serves only “Reconstituted glop and thawed entrees, trucked a thousand miles across country, heated up and plopped on a paper plate by some highschool kid who forgot to wash his hands”. The Waffle Houses I’ve known do this no more than the mom-and-pop greasy-spoon places I’ve loved.
Waffle House is pretty much a bare-bones diner with no pretentions to vanity – you just get grub, not cuisine. Homestyle cooking.
I love the South.
Bob L;
Watch out for when someone says, “It’s all yur’an.”
Probably not in Tennessee, though. I ran into that once in West-by-gawd-Virginee.
i live around indianapolis, we have all of the chains and mom and pops. i eat waffle houses almost every sunday with my golfing buddies. yuppies all, and we are treated just like everyone else. my daughter however will not eat at waffle house and insists on bob evans or cracker barrel. my buddies and i know much better than she does. the waffle houses are better than the fancy ones and the mom and pops are being fazed out. when we can we will try a mom and pop since we do try out a lot of courses.