The thermometer on the dash said 26 degrees when we parked in Bell Buckle, and Jack climbed out of the Pilot and announced that his face had stopped working. We had driven fifty minutes to eat lunch in a town of a few hundred people on the coldest Saturday of the winter. Within ten minutes, all four of us were glad we did.
The last week of January was the kind where nobody leaves the house except for school and work. We had eaten pot roast twice. By Saturday the kids were climbing the walls, and I wanted a trip that cost less than a tank of gas and still felt like going somewhere. Bell Buckle is about 46 miles from us, east on mostly two-lane roads, past cattle standing around round bales in frozen fields.
The town is basically one street. A row of old brick storefronts faces the railroad tracks, most of them antique shops now, with a café in the middle. Every June the town throws an RC Cola and MoonPie festival and the street is packed shoulder to shoulder. On the last day of January we had it nearly to ourselves.
Lunch and pie
The café was warm and loud in the good way, with a wood floor and a pie case by the register that I studied before I looked at the menu. Ryan got a country-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. I got a vegetable plate: turnip greens, white beans, fried okra and a square of cornbread. Nora got a BLT, and Jack got a grilled cheese with tomato soup, which he gave a 7, noting that the soup was the good part. A freight train came through in the middle of lunch and the front windows hummed.
The cornbread was sweet. Ryan noticed, ate my piece too and said nothing, which in our house is a statement. That argument is coming to this blog soon.
Then pie. Jack got chocolate fudge pie and gave it a 9 before his fork was all the way out of his mouth. Nora and I split a slice of chess pie, because I can't see chess pie on a menu and not check it against Granny June's. Our one-bite rule on trips is that everybody tries one bite of the local thing, and here that meant chess pie, so Jack had to take a bite. He called it "too sweet," which is quite a review from a boy with fudge on his chin.
Theirs had a smooth, glossy top without a single crack, which tells you somebody pulled it at the right time. Chess pie is a custard, mostly eggs, sugar and butter. Eggs set as they heat, but if the filling gets too hot, the proteins tighten and squeeze and the top splits. Pull it while the center still has a slight wobble, and the heat left in the pie finishes the job. It took me two cracked practice pies last spring to learn that, and this café clearly knew it already. Lunch for four, two slices of pie and the tip came to $47.
An hour in the antique shops
We walked off lunch in the antique shops, ducking from one warm store to the next. I found Pyrex bowls in the same pattern Granny had in her kitchen, and a red tin recipe box almost exactly like hers, minus the dents, for $18. I held it for a while and put it back. One box is enough, and mine has the right handwriting in it.
Nora found a basket of old aluminum cookie cutters at a dollar apiece and took pictures of them instead of buying any, because she says she already owns too many cookie cutters. Jack found a coffee can full of old baseball cards and studied the prices like a jeweler. Ryan found a chair next to a space heater and stayed in it.
We bought nothing and drove home with the heat on high. It was the cheapest food trip we've ever taken, $6 under our Sunday drive to Leiper's Fork in November, and it got all four of us out of the house on a day when staying in would have been easy.
What it cost
- Gas: $11 (about 92 miles round trip, roughly 4.2 gallons at $2.69)
- Lodging: $0
- Food: $47 (lunch for four, two slices of pie and the tip)
- Admissions and parking: $0 (free parking on the street)
- Antiques: $0, somehow
- Total: $58
- Food per person: $11.75
