The wobbles

It was early Saturday morning, and I was sitting in the diner, waiting for my eggs.

"He got slow eyes this morning," said the woman at the other table to the waitress. "You can see them slow eyes."

Her husband rubbed his eyes and took off his hat, and the waitress put down his coffee.

Their friends came in through the door and went to sit down at their table.

"I got the wobbles this morning," said the new woman. "Don't know why, but I guess I sure got them wobbles."

She did look a little wobbly as she pulled out the chair and sat down.

I looked around the room and up at the wall, and stared for a while at the broad and bushy mustache of Dale Earnhardt, the Nascar driver, who was pictured in an autographed poster over the mirror. It really was an incredible mustache.

Suddenly everyone else in the place burst into maniacal laughter. I looked over. Apparently the cook had brought out something hilarious. They laughed and they laughed and then the waitress said, "Come on, you've gotta show that guy over there," which meant me, because I was the only other one in there.

I got up and went over.

"See, she makes me fried dill pickles," said one of the women. "So they call me pickle woman."

"Pickle woman," I said.

"That's right, pickle woman," she said. "And they call him pancake man."

"You must be quite the couple," I said.

"You got that right," she said.

"We eat here every morning 'cept Mondays," she said. "Yesterday they made him pancakes, and he complained they were too big and that he couldn't eat them. So this time look what they made him."

The cook, who was wearing a camouflage hat, had made a very small pancake and put it on a plate.

The cook had also made special pancakes for the ladies, which were like happy pancakes with bowties or boobs, and all of these things conspired to get Saturday morning in Ozark, Arkansas, off to a rollicking start.