Diners, Dives, and Dirty Deeds

by David F. Berens

  We continued talking while she finished her meal and I drank my Coke. Alison had to get back to her restaurant article, and I had to go through my photos from this morning, so we paid our bills at the counter and walked outside.

  But not before I got her number… to help her with her website and such.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s Alison,” I said into the air. I always called her on speakerphone. It kept the conversation lighter than if we were the only two people on the line.

  As it was, we were the only two people on the line, but she didn’t have to know that.

  “My car wouldn’t start last week and the dealer told me I needed a new battery but it was two hundred dollars and I didn’t have the money so they charged it up and I thought it would last a while—”

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down, Alison, honey.” Mom said. “You always get so excited. Now take a breath and tell me slower what happened.”

  “I had to go to Davidson two days ago, and when I was ready to come home, my car wouldn’t start. There was this really nice guy I met at lunch who bought me a new battery, and—”

  “He bought you a new battery?”

  “Well, I paid for it, but he drove me to Wal-Mart and picked it out. Then he installed it for me.”

  “Well, well, well,” she said and I immediately regretted telling her anything about him. “What’s his name?”

  “What? Mom! Jack. His name is Jack.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Mom, you can’t keep pairing my name up with the last name of every guy I meet.”

  “Why not? A mother can dream, can’t she? Somebody has to be thinking about these things. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  I didn’t reply. We have this same conversation all the time.

  “So, what’s his last name?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied in frustration. “I was worried about my car and how I was going to pay for it and everything. Anyway, this morning it wouldn’t start again. A guy from the dealer came over and jumped it and followed me in. That’s where I am now.”

  “And what’s his name?”

  “Mom, really? The car dealer guy? Stop that! Besides, he reeked of cigarettes.”

  “Oh, don’t marry a man that smokes.”

  “I’m not marrying anybody!”

  “Alison, dear,” she paused and I wondered what kind of bizarre retort was coming this time. “Are you one of those lesbians?”

  “Jesus, Mom! Really? Where do you come up with this stuff? I didn’t mean I’m not marrying anybody ever. Just not right now. I can’t even meet anybody without a car.”

  “What about that nice man who bought you the battery? What’s he like?”

  I sighed and accepted defeat. “He’s tall and thin. Brown hair.”

  “And?” she prodded.

  “And brown eyes.”

  “Is he cute.”

  I was glad she couldn’t see me blush. It was a surprise that I felt this way about Jack having only known him for a few hours. This was a full on, school-girl crush.

  “He’s a photographer, and he seems like a real nice guy.”

  “But is he cute?”

  I ignored the question again.

  “But he probably thinks I’m such a loser. I whined to him about not having any money, then my car wouldn’t work and he had to drag me to Wal-Mart and back. He’d probably run for the hills if I ever called him back.”

  “How do you know? Do you have his number?”

  “Yeah, he gave it to me.”

  “Well, he didn’t give it to you because he never wanted to see you again.”

  Hmm, I thought. She’s got a point. Score one for mom.

  The next morning, I woke up to thoughts of Alison and a heavy rain pounding on the roof. It was still dark and I considered rolling back over and catching a little more sleep. But I didn’t have anything urgent scheduled, so it looked like a good day to catch up on work at home. So, I dragged myself out of bed and tossed on my robe. I had never been a robe guy until I became a photographer. I just couldn’t figure out what part of the day was appropriate for a robe. Get out of the shower, dry off, put on a robe, and what? Wander around for a bit? But now that I had mornings that were often spent in front of a couple of widescreen computer monitors editing hundreds of photos, I found the robe to be the perfect item of clothing for the job. I had actually become a robe snob going as far as purchasing one from the Ritz-Carlton. These babies are world famous.

  I poured myself a bowl of Cheerios, added some Grape Nuts to fill in the holes, shook them together, poured in milk and plopped down in front of my computer. Website photos are pretty boring, but the more they pop, the more the store makes sales, and the more I get referred for other jobs.

  It’s easy to lose track of time when the work is monotonous and dull. You can only bolster the saturation and raise the contrast so many times before the process becomes so repetitive as to be meaningless. My phone rang and a yawn burst forth from my chest. I stretched and the fog of staring at pictures began to dissipate. It rang again and I looked at the clock on my computer screen. 11:00 a.m. Whoa. I looked at my phone and saw Alison on the display. My heart skipped a beat and while my brain was still registering that name, the phone rang a third time. I snapped out of my stupor and hit the speaker button before it went to voicemail.

  “Hi, Alison. What’s up?”

  “Oh, good, you’re there. I need your help again.”

  I stood up from my chair and paced a few steps.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my car again.”

  I took the phone off speaker, concerned that I got her the wrong battery or something.

  “I spent all that money for a new battery, and now they’re telling me it needs a new alternator. They want four hundred and fifty dollars for that.”

  “Oh, no! So, you didn’t need a new battery after all?” I asked.

  “No, they said my battery was bad anyway, but it was probably the alternator that ruined it. Anyway, there’s no way I can afford four hundred and fifty dollars. And what’s worse, I got a call for a magazine article that I can’t do if I can’t drive. It pays three hundred dollars plus expenses! I’ve never gotten expenses before.”

  “What’s the article? Where do you have to go?”

  “Over toward the Smokies. The article is on restaurants in western North Carolina-some diners and even some dives that supposedly have amazing food. Places that not many people know about. I’m thinking I could title it Hidden Gems.”

  “When do you have to be there?” I asked.

  “Sometime soon. I haven’t called any restaurants to schedule anything yet. I have a lot of research to do if I’m going to take this assignment, but how am I going to get there?”

  “I can take you. I’m booked the rest of this week, but next week is free for me. If you can schedule your visits then, I’ll drive. What do they pay for expenses?”

  “Hotels and meals. The IRS mileage rate.”

  “Awesome. I can do that.”

  “That’s really sweet, but you have to do your work, too. I can’t ask you to take all that time off for me.”

  “It’ll be fun. I can take your pictures for you. You need a photographer, right?”

  “Well,” she said, “I’ve never needed one before. I just shoot what I need with my phone.”

  “Maybe I can convince some of the restaurants to let me photograph their dishes for new menus or something like that.”

  “I dunno. These places are pretty small time. I’m not sure if they’ll need a pro like you.”

  “I’ll take care of selling myself. But I’ll do your shots for you anyway. I’ll make you proud.”

  “You sure you’re okay doing this?” Alison asked. “You’re being so sweet.”

  I love that drawl. “Absolutely. Schedule it for next week.”

  xxxMonday morning I picked Alison up at her apartment building. She came down to my Subaru dragging two suitcases
and carrying two bags over her shoulder. “What is all that stuff?” I asked incredulously.

  “The suitcases are full of clothes. The bag has my computer in it, and this is my purse.”

  “Three days, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I brought my bigger suitcase.”

  Three hours later, we were walking down a sidewalk in Asheville. First stop was the Honey Pot, an intriguing name for a restaurant if I ever heard one.

  A girl brought us two menus and asked us to follow her to a table. Alison introduced herself and told her that she was here to see the manager.

  “Oh, you’re the reporter that’s coming today. Come on in.”

  She took us to a tattooed, spiky-haired lady in her early forties. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Pam. You must be Alison.”

  “Yes, and this is my, ah—”

  “Photographer,” I jumped in, proffering my hand. “JackTaylor.”

  “Well, welcome to the Honey Pot. Can I show you two around?”

  “Please,” Alison said, and Pam led us to the kitchen to start her grand tour.

  After showing us her restaurant and providing the complete history, Pam said, “I have the kitchen preparing a sampler of all our favorite dishes. It’s such a nice day out, would you like to sit outside?”

  Pam and an almost identical looking girl twenty years younger brought four oversized plates of food to our table. We were outside, but a rail separated us from the sidewalk, so it still felt like we were inside part of the restaurant.

  “Whoa, that’s a lot of food,” I said.

  “And it all looks absolutely delicious,” Alison said. “You have to tell me about all these fabulous dishes.”

  I gotta hand it to her. Alison really turned on the charm and gushed over everything while Pam told each piece’s story. I opened up my camera bag and selected a 55-200 millimeter zoom lens and almost missed Alison picking up a fork to stab something with a couple dark, sparkly pecans on top.

  “Hold on,” I said. “I don’t even recognize most of these things. I have to get some pictures before you dive in.”

  “What don’t you recognize?” Alison asked. “Haven’t you ever seen a sweet potato pancake before?”

  “Um, no, I haven’t. And I’ve never seen any kind of pancake that looks like that.”

  I got Alison to hold up a fabric reflector I carry with me for outdoor shots like this. It makes a great backlight when I can get the sun behind me or when I use a flash, which I did now since we were underneath an awning that blocked the sun. I got plenty of good shots I thought should be magazine worthy.

  The food was amazing, and Alison took pages of notes. I thought she could write a whole article on this place alone. After getting a wonderful fill of samples, I got up to take some pictures of the restaurant. I walked through the entire place again, taking pictures of servers and plates of food. Two booths of people saw me and asked me to take their pictures too. I gave each table a business card and told them if they email me permission to use their images, I’d send them a copy of their picture.

  Eventually I realized that all the servers here were women, which wasn’t that unusual, but so were most of the customers. I looked a little closer and realized that almost all the servers had spiked hair, too many earrings and tattoos aplenty. The customers were in pairs—again, mostly women, and half of them looked just like the wait staff. I saw the name of the restaurant in reverse through the front window and smiled as the relevance hit me. The Honey Pot.

  I walked back to the table to switch lenses to get some shots of the front of the building. Just as I got there, Pam returned with a plate of desserts.

  Eventually, we finished and waddled our way back to the car.

  “If I worked there, I’d weigh two hundred pounds,” Alison said.

  “If you worked there, you’d probably keep the weight off running away from your coworkers.”

  2

  A Million Dollar Emerald

  After our first restaurant, we left the interstate behind. We almost left paved roads behind. The North Carolina mountains can get pretty remote. I’ve driven past this general area many times on my way to the Smokies, but I’ve never come through all these back roads before.

  Along the way, we passed two signs advertising gem mines. I had heard about gem mining in North Carolina, but I didn’t realize it covered such a large area, and we joked about striking the mother lode.

  Our destination was a small restaurant that Alison said advertised southern home cooking. Between the GPS and some directions that the proprietor had given Alison, we seemed to be homing in. Why anyone would drive this far out in the boonies for a restaurant was beyond me.

  When we finally found it, there were no cars in the parking lot. We got out of the car and tried the door; it was locked. We looked in the windows, and it was so dark inside that we couldn’t be sure if it was still in operation or not.

  Alison was sure that this was the place that she was given directions to, but she had no explanation at all for the empty building. “Maybe they’re closed on Mondays,” I offered.

  “They didn’t tell me that. I’m so sorry I dragged you all the way out here.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” I replied. “It doesn’t look like we missed out on much anyway.”

  “But we drove all this way, and you’re using up your whole day.”

  “Well, the day isn’t used up yet. Remember those gem mine signs? Let’s go to one!”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Come on!” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

  “I’m not dressed for gem mining.”

  “You brought two trunkfuls of clothes. Surely you have a pair of jeans in there.”

  “I do, but what do I do about shoes?”

  “Did you bring some tennis shoes?”

  “Yeah, but they’re white. I don’t want to get them dirty.” Alison looked down at her feet and added, “That probably sounds silly to you.”

  I knew enough to not respond to that. Instead, I told her, “Just put on your jeans and your brownest shoes that don’t have high heels. You’ll be fine. This looks like as good a place as any to change.” I let her use my car as her changing room while I walked around the back of the restaurant to mark my territory.

  We decided that the first gem mine sign we saw looked much more promising than the hand-painted second, so we retraced our route until we found it, and turned down that road.

  They had a pretty decent setup, and there were a few pickups in the parking lot, so that was promising. Inside the front building, they had a setup with buckets, shovels, and other related items under a sign that listed all the prices. Alison hesitated at the cost, but I told her this was my treat and repeated, “It’ll be fun.”

  There was a doorway that led to a back room with a sign overhead that said Museum. I suggested we start there.

  The “museum” was a smallish room with a bunch of dusty glass cabinets with low-price gems underneath. The cabinets looked like they came from an old jewelry store … very old. They had a lot of amethyst inside, some quartz and pyrite—also known as fool’s gold. There were actually a few rubies and emeralds, too—much more valuable gems—although these samples were more rock than gem. They also had a fake emerald that was supposed to be a representation of the biggest emerald ever found in North Carolina. It was about the size of a baseball, and the sign said it was worth a million dollars. Nothing like that for a little inspiration.

  I paid for a pair of buckets and shovels, and we headed up the path to the creek: me in my cargo pants and gray tennis shoes, Alison in her designer jeans and Sperrys.

  We dug in the creek and sorted out a few small colored rocks—nothing of any value, but we felt like we had to keep something. One of the owners came by with a bucket, throwing marble-sized colored stones into the creek. “They salt this,” I said. “That’s not fair.”

  “What do you mean?” Alison asked.

  “That guy’s throwing sup
posed gems into the creek. This isn’t mining. It’s just picking back up what somebody threw out.”

  “Well I’m going over where he just threw some.”

  “I’m going down over the hill,” I said. “Maybe I’ll find something natural,” and I charged off through the trees in search of my treasure.

  I found a small outcropping where it looked like a backhoe or something had been digging into the hillside. Water was seeping out of one spot, and I dug around there a while. I lifted out a pretty big rock that had something hard and reflective behind it. I pried out a fist-sized piece of quartz. It had a gold-colored vein running through it, and I remembered hearing somewhere that gold is often found with quartz, but so is pyrite.

  I noticed another glint in the hole I made and reached in again. I pulled out a tennis-ball-sized dark green shiny crystal with some gray rock on one side. I wiped it on my pant leg and held it up to the light. It had two hexagon-shaped sections offset from each other, like a roll of silver dollars torn half open in the middle. The shorter section had some lines and cracks running through it, but the longer section was clear emerald green through and through. This was a great crystal, and it had to be a real emerald!

  I hacked deeper into the hole with my shovel for the next five minutes but couldn’t come up with anything else. Unable to contain my excitement any longer, I ran up to where I had left Alison to show off my find.

  I found her farther upstream, leaning on her shovel, watching me approach. “I found a few gems,” she said, offering me her bucket. Sure enough, she had some nice stones in there. I couldn’t identify any, and I didn’t think they were worth anything, but that wasn’t the point.

  She reached toward my bucket. “Did you find any?” she asked.

  I handed her the bucket, and she looked disappointed. “Oh. Well, you have a couple in there.”

  I hadn’t added anything to my bucket since I left the creek. I had my prize emerald in my cargo pocket. “Well, there’s this, too,” I said, revealing my find.