TALL TALES FROM TWO SHORT PEOPLE

As a rule Mac did not frequent, Denny�s, but here he was at 1 AM on a wet, muggy Georgia night, with his wife Janet. Muggy and wet, one of those Georgia nights where the rain does not fall, but just hangs there for you walk into it. Indeed, it does seem as though it's raining all over the world, as the song says.

Cuisine was not the issue at Denny's, it was the type of people who found this raging need to ingest eggs, greasy hash browns and soggy buttered toast at a time when their bodies should be asleep.

Take that table in the corner. Four guys had pulled up in the puddle filled parking lot with what once was a small Ryder moving van, its name spray painted over, almost. Being towed was a wreck of a wreck, rusty brown with a bright orange racing stripe down the side. Now the racing stripe was not just frivolous or a sign of optimism, Mac was sure it was the plastic racing stripe that was holding the wreck together.

These four could have been in the road tour of Deliverance. The alpha male was a large ruddy faced twentyish lad whose sleeveless tee-shirt had surely been used to check the wreck�s oil, and it was obvious that he had not trusted the first check, but conducted several others. The other two guys showed no signs of being much different than their leader, maybe just an oil check or two different. But lastly was a true freak of nature, a black dude who looked more redneck than his three buddies. Nothing hip hop there. It was obvious that there were more than one or two moonshine stills in his family tree. Just what made him redneck Mac couldn't pinpoint, unlike the others his Tee-shirt had sleeves and had once been green, and his baseball cap looked like any other John Deere cap. Could it be the chaw in his mouth, or even more enlightening, the tobacco stains on his T-shirt? Soooeeee!, thought Mac, must be the rain that brings them out.

Mac tore himself away from his new dining buddies to the gentleman sitting in a booth just to his right. And gentleman was just the word to describe him. He sat there, erect in bearing and every inch the opposite of the four in the corner booth. He sported a white turtle neck sweater with a charcoal gray dinner jacket, which set off perfectly the white carnation on his lapel. In print this does not do the man justice, his clothes wore him more than the other way around, to the extent that he did not look out of place sitting in Denny�s at 1 AM on a soaking, wet morning. In front of him was his cup of coffee, flanked by neatly arranged silverware on one side and a primly folded used sugar package upon which, exactly centered, was the half empty cream container. Class thought Mac, class, wonder what he drives, Cadillac, Lincoln Town Car, come on get up to date Mac, a huge urban assault vehicle, a big gleaming SUV!

Now let�s not draw a picture of Mac as a snob. Born and raised in California, he was a Southerner by choice or at least was in the South by choice. For even with his sense of escaping California, a state that was itself in a state of deep denial, every now and then the scent of jasmine and magnolia was wafted away by the clinging scent of Skoal. It was at times like this, or as one good ole boy said �During a redneck moment,� that Mac realized he might still be a little out of his element.

Mac himself, he was what one would call short, five one, or as his southern breathen in the corner booth would say, �five foot and a tater.� He did not look his age, his full head of dark brown hair, plus his new beard along with his tapered levis and snug shirt gave the impression of late thirties.

�What will it be Shug?� a voice cooed into his subconscious. Looking up Mac beheld the Diva of Denny's, southern womanhood at its most natural, or at least, thought Mac its most nocturnal. Her name, according to the crooked name tag on her blouse, was Daisy. Of course, mused Mac, what else could it be.

�You�all gonna eat Shug?�

Mac opened his menu, and the first thing to catch his eye was a LoCal plate. He looked at the picture, which looked much realer than the food it proposed to represent. Man, he thought, this all started with Sugar Free, then LoCal, Low Fat, Fat Free, Salt Free and now Low Carb, oh and let�s not forget Tofu, which Mac liked to call Toe Fu. We no longer guide our lives by the Good Book, mused Mac, but by the Nutrition Facts on the back of a can of Pork and Beans, plain old beans if your Jewish. All this after the first sugar substitute that tasted like granulated antifreeze. Just think, if it had tasted reasonably good, by now we would have Food Free!

�Shug?�

Damn, another senior moment, thought Mac. Turning to Janet he asked, �What am I having?" He wondered just when had he stopped ordering his own food. Must have come about the same time he stopped buying his own underwear.

�Have the chicken fried steak with three eggs, you look peckish,� Janet said.

I look good, thought Mac, not peckish!

His mind deeply involved trying to remember the last time he bought underwear Mac did not hear the words directed toward him from the corner booth, nor comprehend his wife�s comeback, which was along the lines of � �Yes he is!� Yes I�m what, panicked Mac, a Yankee, a fugitive, wearing my wife�s bright, blue underwear, revenuer?

�I asked,� came the surprisingly drawl free voice of the alpha male in the corner booth, �if I should know you, you look like someone famous! You know, a celebrity, an actor, a singer maybe.�

Mac�s confused panicked look was not lost on the alpha male, who quickly apologized by introducing himself, �Excuse me sir, my name�s JR, and I hope you will forgive me for being so forward, but sir you really look like someone we should know.�

Mac. with his amazedly agile mind, responded with a firm but knowingly.....�Huh?�

�He looks like Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees,� said his now animated wife. �You know the singing group from Australia.� �Australia, bunch of faggots, in a backassward island,� came a voice across from him, a voice with a southern drawl you could cut with a dull knife. Did that come from the dapper gentleman across from him? In answer, the gentleman went on, �I heah that theyums frigg what�ll ya callum, oh yeah, kangyroos!�