American Eateries: Waffle House

Waffle House on Yale Blvd.,  Albuquerque, 2013.

Here's a little bit of Americana. If my diner geography is accurate, Waffle House is found in the South, and Denny's is its Northern answer. And Village Inn seems to be in the West. They are not affiliated, as far as I know, but at any of these you can probably order American food like chicken-fried steak and drink bottomless cups of weak coffee.

I missed taking the photo of its famous sign with Scrabble-like letters spelling its name. Highway drivers in the Southern U.S. know to look for those glowing yellow letters. 

Here's the menu for your perusal. You've got Alice's Iced Tea, Bert's Best Bowl of Chili, and Walt's Soup to choose from. Save room for Bert's Chili Sausage Gravy (Bert was creative) and Papa Joe's Pork Chops! Some of the typos are amusing... like in the Ligher Choices section. See if you can find it. 

Let's go to Waffle House! 

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Photographer's note: this was shot with 100 speed film that was inadvertently set to ASA 800, then "pushed" in the developing process to allow enough light to hit the negative. Hence the tonal quality. I kind of like it.

Abandoned Used Car Lot, Albuquerque

I'm interested to see places where nature has begun to return to human-altered landscapes. I've blogged about it before, and probably will again -- it was a recurring theme in a family trip to Europe two summers ago, but I have yet to publish any of those photos here...for now. Anyhow, here is a glimpse into wild taking over a sliver of Albuquerque. Catey and I stumbled upon this old used car lot when we were giving ourselves a self-guided tour of the city over Thanksgiving. 

Nature returning, Albuquerque, November 2013.

We thought it was pretty cool. We were taken by the look of the asphalt fractured by strands of fine grass. We don't know what species it is, but we assume it's a non-native. I'm not sure why this matters, but given the nature of our work, it permeates most of our thoughts about plants and the human landscape. Somehow, I do like the idea that these grasses are native. I like the idea that they once grew in this very spot.

Broken skateboard in old used car lot, Albuquerque, November 2013.

Whatever grass it is, one has to wonder how it colonized. How do weeds do this? How do they get everywhere? Here, in Albuquerque, it's not hard to imagine that wind brought this seed here. Wind brought seed here to arrive the very day that a flaw first appeared in this parking lot. It may have blown from a sidewalk three feet away. It may have blown from the foothills of Sandia Mountain, 10 miles away.

Medical Arts Ave NE & Lomas Blvd NE, 1991-2012. Google Earth Imagery.