Over a barrel

I was crackers before Cracker Barrel was cool. I grew up with my parents dragging me out of bed on Saturday and driving to the outskirts of Jasper, Alabama to a place called Uncle Mort’s before we knew how to spell Herschel. It was Cracker Barrel-esque with rocking chairs and red-eye gravy. 

So I don’t remember the exact moment Cracker Barrel came onto the scene, and into my digestive tract. I just feel like we’ve always been close. If you had paid me money, I couldn’t tell you what was on the sign 15 days ago. I can tell you what’s on the menu, and it starts with dump and ends with lin’s. Most things that begin with dump aren’t appetizing, this being the exception. 

But the sign? No, I couldn’t have come up with Uncle Herschel with his elbow on a pickle barrel. I really didn’t even know Herschel and I were related. So I find it odd that apparently boo-coodles of people did know what was on the sign, and are infuriated to find that the old man is gone. I’m a little more disturbed that the president of the United States of Cracker Barrel needed to weigh in on this. I’ve dug down deep into the crevices of my heart to bring to the surface my inner feelings about this, and I keep coming up with the same emotion. I don’t care. 

And I’m a sentimentalist at the core. I still have the bread from the dinner where I was proposed to. The bread! I cried when Tootie graduated on The Facts of Life. But no one really educated me on the human emotion attached to signage. 

When it comes to Cracker Barrel, I’ve always been far more concerned a giant farm implement hanging above my head was going to come unwired, and I’d walk out of there with a winnowing fork in my skull. So, you know, I was kind of glad to learn that with the sign change, they were also going to cull some of the barn storage. Did you hear they’re keeping the deer heads, though? Finally, something that makes sense in all of this. All good red-blooded Americans know that to mount a dead deer minus its body to the wall is a sign of decency and respect, especially in a restaurant that doesn’t serve deer meat. 

I’m pretty sure we’re overreacting, and this whole sign thing comes down to a pretty basic explanation. It’s hard to draw a person. In fact, if I were in corporate, Herschel would have been a stickman, or a smiley face, and his name would’ve been Bob – People who can’t spell Mort can spell Bob. 

Did y’all even know his name before the hype? The only person I knew named Herschel was Herschel Walker, the running back for Georgia. Cracker Barrel clientele doesn’t usually conjure images of football running backs for me, although if you get there at about 10:30 on a Saturday morning, you’ll relate to the walker part. 

Bottom line. The dumplin’s are good. The sign? Not so sure I’ve ever even considered it, but now that I do, I don’t love the mustard color much. But there’s this. It’s a really good place to stop if you have to go to the bathroom. No one stares at you when you walk in, or asks you how many are in your party. You don’t have to buy gas station snacks or get a key that’s duct-taped to a plastic fork from a cashier, and try not to look at the vending machines while you’re in there. You can just peruse a candle that smells like banana bread, or a tea towel that says something insulting en route without giving away the fact that the sole reason you’re in here is to visit the bathroom.

And it’s free. Except for the fact that you loved the insulting tea towel a little too much.