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"Sour crea my check on the table "Makes all the difference in the world It’s not just for baked potatoes, you know"

"You don’t say," I grinned, letting her tell me her diner wisdom

Twenty minutes later I was back on the road with a full tue cake, and a sudden soft spot for a good old diner

By the time I made it across the New York State line, I was in a very different state ofin truck stops, and already sick of being hoh I wasn’t technically horadual climb into the Catskill Mountains, I was so tired and cranky that no a the two-lane country highway could lift hway and onto thefro that the annual Memorial Day parade would be held in just a few days, and the char draped across porches and hung from telephone poles and lampposts, failed to charrand horand homes on Eles on Locust and Chestnut, past the quiet ranch homes in the subdivision on the outskirts of town, over the railroad tracks, and back out into the country The houses were farther apart now, so farms, some stranded in a sea of rusted and busted-out cars forever on blocks

Finally I turned onto the long winding driveway, gravelly and pitted, lined with flower boxes painted in Day-Glo yellow, orange, purple, and pink Here and there, signs propped up in the flower boxes shouted reen:

LESS TROOPS MORE HUGS

A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE

NO DAY BUT TODAY

Pretty sure that last one was a line from Rent My eyes rolled, a conditioned response As I buns ht see her Happy Positive Eternally optimistic

I still saw the wohtme in front of all of my friends to make sure I didn’t pick off my bean sprouts from my sandwich, that I needed the fiber for

I drove around the last bend in the driveway and found h it had been a few years, it looked exactly the sa white paint Expansive front porch covered in half-finished art projects Whirlybirds and pinwheels scattered across the front lahich could use a goodAt least three different paint colors had been tried out here and there on the side of the house, all abandoned when soht my mother’s attention Knotholes where woodpeckers tap-tap-tapped right on through, and occasionally brought their friends the squirrels Always nice to wake up to a scurry in the walls