Who Loves the Waffle House? Scott Hamilton
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Brit’s 30th birthday. Sometimes it still seemed only yesterday that he had celebrated his 21st back at the house, over homemade cake (if memory served) and “chippies”, no doubt.
In Hungary, it had been a Friday. After switching planes in Vienna, they had come in mid afternoon, and at that moment riding to the hotel, Collette felt as though she might fall on her face. She had never felt such fatigue, never knew it was possible to experience such heaviness of the eyes. Staying awake for nearly 40 hours straight, was perhaps more difficult than she expected.
At the airport and hotel, they met several missionaries from the church, American and Hungarian alike: Primrose Watchword, Singabahambayo Thina, and Brian Joubert and the first team from the church who had already been in Hungary for several days: Pastor Barnacles, Gratiano Charlot, Don Quixote and Babooshka Christmas, and Shizuka Arakawa (a complete riot, cancer survivor, and fluent speaker of French, probably in her late 30’s at the time). She had little trouble speaking her mind, and was hysterical and very kind, all at once.
At one point in the week, Collette heard her say to Gratiano Charlot, a younger man with a wife and two small children back home:
“You are the perfect evangelist,” she had been saying, “Persuasive, enthusiastic, handsome…” She joked, although she was serious, and was paying a compliment.
But despite the terrible weariness to which Collette had succumbed that afternoon, there was the redemption of looking forward to a good night of sleep after a tiring but beautiful walk about the city. Collette truly fell in love with Budapest that night. And afterward, there was dinner at a restaurant under the stars with the missionary family. Their two oldest, Patty and Sierra, were very kind girls, 12, and nine days away from being 15. They were to be wonderful guides and friends to Diana and Collette over the next week and a half.
And there was strawberry soup before dinner was served. Fried Camembert with fries, although rice and cranberry jelly would usually be served instead of the fries. And the accordion player under the awning next to a basket of blankets for guests to wrap around themselves as the evening grew chilly…
On the drive back to the hotel, Collette sat between Gratiano Charlot and Diana in the van, and she vaguely remembered seeing fireworks shot over the river as her head rolled back in sleep.
“Come on, Collette, stay awake just a little longer,” Collette sort of remembered Gratiano saying to her, making sure that she didn’t fall over.
Meanwhile, in present day, back at the office, Scott Hamilton stepped in for awhile after performing his part of the skit for the VBS kids as Zacchaeus. (How he landed the part, Collette couldn’t just quite figure, as he was over six feet himself). And he talked about his love for the Waffle House.
“Oh, it’s all good. Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm.”
“But it’s so dirty!” Ivy protested.
“But you need a little of that dirt. It’s Americana, the diner. We buy a new Waffle House coffee mug every time we eat there. The best.”
Meanwhile, Ivy, who was preparing to leave for Tulsa the next day to visit family over the weekend, left early from work with the remainder of the donuts for Nicodemus and Megan. And Rosemary told them all about how Chester had brought in a half-filled pretzel jar of pennies to donate to the Egyptian Preschool, as part of the kids’ VBS project. There had been a battle all week between the girls and the boys to see who could bring in the most pennies, and needless to say, Chester’s donation put them easily over the top. Along with the other pennies the boys produced that day, the coin counter at the bank (after an hour of processing) produced a receipt for $182 at the end of the day.
“I am God, and there is none
like me,
declaring the end from the
beginning
and from ancient times things not
yet done…”
Isaiah 46:9b-10