For those who have never been to Price’s Barbecue House — I’m sorry and you should fix that as soon as possible — they are set up to take your order at the counter, hand the ticket to their right while you get settled at a table. After an appropriate amount of time spent thinking about the delicious food you are about to receive one of the nice guys running the short order grill calls your name. You go collect your food and eat this delicious meal they have prepared for you.
Mr. Price sometimes takes the order. More often than not, of late, one of the ladies working there is running the front counter. Mr. Price, as I’ve mentioned here before, remembers me. I visited the place so much during undergrad that last fall he asked if I was back or just visiting. That was more than a decade and thousands of customers ago.
(I’ve eaten a lot of food here. And, while it is still sensibly priced, I just had a flash of memory: is it possible that my breakfast here once cost $2.17? Surely not. That seems shockingly low, even for a century ago, especially for the golden age of the 1990s. Another number pops in my head: $5.45? My memory can’t be trusted. That was in the last century, mind you.)
Anyway, Mr. Price remembers me. The ladies, one of them at least, doesn’t recall my name, but she remembers the usual breakfast we order. This new lady, though … Last week she wrote my name as she did above. I thought that perhaps she spelled it phonetically. Perhaps, I reasoned, a little of my north Alabama accent had slipped into my name as I told her the order. Maybe I’d done as much of my family does and made it sound like an I. Today I was very deliberate with the pronunciation, just out of curiosity.
“Kenny.”
And, again, she wrote: Kinny.
And that might have been the worst thing that happened today.
I’ve got it made, I tell ya.
Also, I have a big stack of papers to grade. So, if you’ll pardon me …
