A week into our Bug Trip, Harry and I found ourselves cruising through Arkansas. I was hoping to flash along Route 40 without stopping. Not that I have anything against Arkansas. Like my home state of Virginia, Arkansas was part of the Confederacy during the Civil War and relied on slavery for its economic stability. Mostly a white dominated rural state, Arkansas is made up of timberlands and the Ozark Mountains. Its name comes from a Sioux Indian word meaning “downstream place,” probably because the Mississippi River flows through on its way to Louisiana. The Arkansas River and lots of other rivers crisscross the state, too, all hurrying to the Gulf of Mexico. Even though Bill Clinton, Johnny Cash and Sam Walton have their roots in Arkansas, nothing about the state called to me.

The Bug ran low on gas somewhere between Memphis and Little Rock, and Harry and I needed breakfast. Forrest City looked promising. While he worked the pump, I asked a local where we could get a bite to eat. He suggested The Ole Sawmill Café behind the gas station and next to a truck stop. Harry and I have a condo I use as an office in a two-hundred-year-old building that was once a sawmill, and it seemed fitting to eat at a café with the name sawmill. I told Harry to meet me there when he finished pumping diesel into the bug.

A couple heavy duty pickups were parked in the lot, one red and one black. Two equally heavy duty guys with silver cowboy buckles on their belts stood next to the black truck, one of them pointing out specific attributes around the wheel wells. A puffy-haired blonde sat in the passenger seat smoking a cigarette. The Bug was going to look a wee bit out of place in the Old Sawmill parking lot.

I walked quickly past the trucks. When I entered The Ole Sawmill, I found myself in a gift shop crammed with local crafts and dolls, candy, furry stuffed buffalo, and silly items like a redneck wine glass—a mason jar fused to a glass stem. When I asked the woman behind the counter where the restaurant was, she jerked her head toward a wide doorway to her left.

A waitress in a little apron was scurrying about, putting out food on a long buffet counter.

“Where should I sit?” I asked.

“Anywhere.” She whipped her eyes around the nearly empty room. I took a table near the entrance so Harry would see me when he came in. The place was decked out like a large saloon with rusted tools on the walls, antique tin ads for tractors, and a defunct Nehi cooler. A couple who looked to be in their early eighties was finishing breakfast at a nearby table. Her gray hair was teased into a high bouffant with a French twist at the back, the whole thing sprayed so hard that no loose tendril could escape. Her husband kept his head down as he ate, forearms against the table edge. When they finished, he threw down a bill for a tip.

The waitress, wearing shorts and an Ole Sawmill tee shirt too tight for her ample figure, asked me, “You having the lunch buffet?”

“Actually, I’d like breakfast,” I said.

It was eleven o’clock, but I was craving eggs.

“I can get you a breakfast menu but it will be limited. They won’t have grits, they won’t have biscuits, and they won’t have gravy.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I just want an egg and cheese sandwich.”

“What you want to drink?”

“Just coffee, thanks.”

The waitress looked as if she had a habit of helping herself to the all-you-can-eat buffet, but she brought the coffee quickly. There were sugar packets on the table, but I had to ask for milk.

“Milk?” she asked.

I guessed they didn’t use milk in their coffee in Arkansas.

“Cream then, if you have it.”

She offered a saucer of little cream containers.

“Half and half okay?” she said.

“Yes, that’s fine,” I answered.

She winked. “I know—I love it.”

I could see she did.

Harry came in and eyed the spread of food laid out under a canopy of heat lamps.

“They have a lunch buffet,” he said hopefully.

“We haven’t had breakfast.”

“I’d like some lunch.” He got up and walked around the island of huge chrome containers. Grits and gravy, green beans cooked soft with a ham bits, fried chicken, fried catfish, liver ‘n’ onions, carrots in a buttery sauce, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, creamed corn, and a monstrous offering of fresh rolls.

When he came to the table empty handed, I said, “Get lunch if you want it.” I tried to sound cheerful. Harry likes to please me, and I suppose he thought if I was having breakfast he ought to have breakfast, too, even if he wanted liver and mashed potatoes. I really didn’t care what he ate.

The waitress came over and Harry ordered scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. While we waited for our order, he watched truckers come in and pile their plates with crispy fried chicken (marinated and double dipped) and mountains of mashed potatoes. I felt as if I had denied my Boston husband a true southern culinary experience. While he stewed, I read about the history of The Ole Sawmill on the back of the menu. In 1939 a matriarch called Liberty Bell sold hamburgers for a nickel out of an old streetcar. During the war, meat shortages forced her to raise prices, and hamburgers went up to seven cents. When customers complained, she raised the price again—to a dime.

Eventually Liberty Bell added a railroad dining car to the streetcar. When her husband Tommy returned from World War II and bought a barber shop in Forrest City, Lib closed up her streetcar and opened The Liberty Bell Café next to the barber shop. The food was good, the prices reasonable, and the business thrived. When the interstate came through Arkansas, Lib hired a New York trained chef and upgraded the café to a restaurant. Eventually Lib’s grandson Tom bought the business, moved it to a larger place, and renamed it The Ole Sawmill. Tom kept Lib’s philosophy of home cooking, fast friendly service, and a family atmosphere, even for strangers like Harry and me stopping for a brief visit.

We didn’t meet Tom, but we heard that he has a secret ingredient that keeps customers coming back—bacon grease. “We got a stove,” he says on his website, “we got a pot, and we cook food in it seasoned with the secret ingredient.” Turnip greens are a customer favorite—cooked with bacon grease, of course. Chicken livers, too. I  loved my mother’s chicken livers when I was a kid in Virginia, and she cooked them in the same skillet that she had used to fry the morning bacon. What in the world was I doing eating a plain egg sandwich?

By the time we finished our meager breakfast, The Ole Sawmill was crowded with diners, their plates piled high from the buffet line. When we walked by the buffet offerings on our way out, Harry strolled slowly, like a player on the losing team eyeing the trophy that had slipped through his fingers.

There are times when I wish I could turn back the clock, even just a little. If I could go back to that morning in Arkansas, I would have insisted that Harry fill his plate from The Ole Sawmill lunch buffet. In fact, I’m salivating right now for a crunchy bite of that fried chicken and one of those soft homemade rolls slathered with honey butter. Someday maybe I’ll learn that having my way doesn’t necessarily make me a winner.