QUOTE : I was suffering with profound personality change, and if I had to go out onto the highway and stick out my thumb and secure a ride to a Waffle House in order to consume grits in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I would go to a Waffle House, leaving behind the unwanted back hair and the expanding belt lines and the godforsaken cheese grits to make of myself a person of the road, a person of the highway, a person of indeterminate location. You could get some grits at a Waffle House, and it wouldn’t cost you an arm and leg, because it was presumed at Waffle House that you were on your last nickel, that you had squandered opportunities, that all was illusion. A man still has to eat, however, and coarsely ground cornmeal was best. It needed nothing other than what it was, and if an inn with a bunch of nauseating pastels and some faux-Mexican decor could not provide you with true and authentic grits, then you might go elsewhere, as you did, eventually. ★