Toledo isn't Hicksville - it's got way better food

One can divine the character of a city by observing what the locals eat. Here in Toledo, we're known for Hungarian hotdogs, but one can also find everything from pizzas to Mexican to Chinese, and even those diners featuring "legs and eggs." We have sports bars, elegant seafood bistros and Thai food, too. Upscale, downscale, healthy or cholesterol-busting, take your pick! This sort of diversity should not be taken for granted.

When my wife and I arrived in Roxborro, N.C., on a business trip last week, the only place open for dinner was Hog Heaven Barbeque. The décor and lighting can best be described as what one would find in a laundromat. The young waitress was quite talkative and asked us many friendly but probing questions about why we were there and where we were headed. Perhaps Pearline was surprised that a couple of Yankees had stumbled into the place, but she must have felt an affinity with us as she was moved to share some stories about her ex-boyfriend's father, her dog and some surprisingly unappetizing personal medical issues.

The food at Hog Heaven was OK, provided one doesn't mind everything served deep-fried, battered, smothered in gravy, and with a side order of down-home conversation.

The next morning, we set out to find a suitable breakfast establishment and stopped at a gas station/convenience store to ask directions. The woman inside pointed to the rear of the building and said with an accent you could hang a hat on, "We got ever'thing you want right there, hon!"

Indeed, there was quite a crowd of patrons back there, and we had found no other restaurants that were open at 9 a.m., so I went out to the car, fetched my wife and re-entered.

The menu comprised two columns of typed words on a dog-eared sheet of paper taped to the cash register. I scanned it for a moment before ordering scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. The woman asked what kind of meat I wanted with my order. Seeing my puzzled look, she said I could get steak, ham, pork sausages or a breakfast burrito, and I asked her to stop there before it became even more improbable. She wrote out a ticket and sent us to the checkout way at the front of the store to pay. We had to go to a third area to get our beverages, then we were directed back to the original counter in the back to pick up our food.

After my grand tour of the entire establishment, I was standing in line to get our meal with about seven other guys, all of whom were wearing John Deere hats. My claim ticket had a number on it, so I expected someone would call out "331," but instead the woman shouted, "Who had the grits, gravy, ham, biscuits and coffee?" A guy stepped forward waving his ticket and she said, "Hold on, Wendell. You had eggs, grits, gravy, ham and coffee. Yours'll be up in a minute, hon."

I never did hear my number, but the first time she shouted "scrambled eggs" I stepped up and picked up our meals, served in attractive Styrofoam boxes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the eggs were cold and burnt, the ham tasted like upholstery and the potatoes were straight out of a can.

As I said, it was the only place open in town.

Some friends of ours used to kid us that Toledo was sort of a "Hicksville." After this breakfast, my wife told me they were wrong. "This is Hicksville," she said. After our week of grease and gravy, it was nice to get back to Toledo where one only has to eat grits if he really wants them.