By Pam MansellHerald Writer
By Pam Mansell
Herald Writer
IT'S 8 A.M. AS I WRITE THIS, and about three weeks ago at this time, my husband Charley and I were driving through Virginia, looking for a place to eat breakfast.
We were on our way to Gatlinburg, Tenn., where the Wilmington Area High School Band, which includes our son Jeff, was participating in the Smoky Mountain Music Festival. We had planned to stop at a Bob Evans restaurant in Wytheville, Va., but, unfortunately, we hadn't allowed for the fact that the route that would take us to Tennessee branched off before we reached the Bob Evans.
So there we were, cruising through the gently rolling terrain of western Virginia, no breakfast in sight, when we came to a sign advertising the Country Kitchen restaurant in Marion.
At this point, it would be appropriate for Rod Serling to appear, look at you all, and say, ``It's a warm spring day, and Pam and Charley Mansell think they are stopping for an ordinary breakfast in an ordinary small town. But this stop is in (dramatic pause here) THE TWILIGHT ZONE.''
The restaurant was about a mile and a half from the exit, and, it turned out, was actually in Rural Retreat, a quaint grouping of houses and small stores that looked like the Virginia equivalent of New Wilmington. If the Country Kitchen -- which, by the way, was definitely not part of the large restaurant chain of the same name -- hadn't had such a large sign, we would have driven right past it, not dreaming that this tiny, faded, slightly crumbling structure could really hold enough people to call itself a restaurant.
We walked in, and it was clear from the first moment that this place didn't get many non-Rural Retreaters. There were about 10 small tables, and about half of them were filled with people who obviously knew each other. They all stopped talking and stared at us as we stood in the doorway. A woman in an apron came out from the kitchen and took us to a table as the others watched us with the fascination that would normally be reserved for space aliens or punk rockers.
The Country Kitchen had gingham curtains on the windows and the heads of antlered bucks on the wall. All the breakfast entrees had names. ``Roger'' was one homemade biscuit with sausage gravy and two tomato slices. ``Willy'' was two homemade biscuits with gravy and two eggs. Just about everything came with biscuits and gravy. Charley and I ordered our breakfasts without that extra fat, and you could almost feel the shock waves in the place.
But it got worse when Charley got out the cellular phone to make some business calls.
It would be exaggerating to say that our fellow diners leaned over Charley's shoulder to see what he was doing with this strange contraption _ but it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration. We were fast becoming the main attraction in town.
The aproned lady came back and stared at the phone while she asked me if we wanted anything else. I asked for some decaffeinated tea. Big mistake.
``Decaffeinated tea?'' she laughed, shaking her head at the thought of such a newfangled idea. ``No, we don't have any decaffeinated tea,'' she said, emphasizing the last two words distinctly and loudly. There were a few chuckles in the restaurant.
We didn't linger over our tea (the caffeine kind, of course) and got back on the road in short order. I imagine we've since become part of the Rural Retreat folklore, with locals gathering in the Country Kitchen to recount the tale of our coming. ``Remember when those two city slickers with the phone came to town...?''
Pam Mansell covers New Wilmington for The Herald.