Mitch, Please! by Matt Jones

Author:Matt Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Whitley County

Hanging at Glen’s Restaurant

I am going to tell you folks a secret at this point in the trip: we are currently on county 69 of 120, and Chris and I are starting to get a little tired. Each county in the state is great and all, but there are a lot of them and sometimes they start to run together a bit. Then there are the moments when you see something unique and, suddenly, it is all worthwhile. While driving along Highway 92, a narrow, winding road that is the best route between Williamsburg and Barbourville (which is not to say it’s a good route), we discovered Glen’s Restaurant. It was a ramshackle, bright-blue cottage, crumbling in spots, its door garnished with crushed cans of Dr Pepper and strewn candy wrappers, with a sign that read simply “Glens Restaurant.” The place looked abandoned, honestly, but as if a force had overtaken me, I jerked the wheel and pulled over.

Junk was everywhere. We crept up to the front door gingerly, dodging the leftover packaging boxes and red Solo cups on the steps. I hesitantly approached the door, a lone note about a lost dog taped on it, when a voice shouted from the parking lot, “Go on, you can go in!”

Glen’s is a combination restaurant and grocery store crammed into two rooms, each the size of a college dorm room. It’s a “restaurant” in the sense that Glen has a frier behind the counter on which he can make you grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, or, if you have the time, a hamburger. He cooks with a microwave, a toaster, and a small residential stove in a dark side space, with an old 1980s refrigerator holding the goods. It’s a “grocery” in the sense that it sells these items (listed in no particular order): a giant can of yellow cling peaches, two boxes of Wheaties, three jars of tartar sauce, a Saltines box of indeterminate age, a children’s bubble set, a homemade Ziploc bag full of gumdrops, two flyswatters, a ceramic figure of a sad clown, ten or so water bottles indented by time, a guitar-shaped clock with Willie Nelson’s face on it, a coat hanger draped in colorful scarves, and a family of porcelain manatees swimming among seaweed. That’s just a sample of Glen’s inventory. Despite the room’s tiny size, behind every item is another, different item, slightly more baffling than the one in front of it. I moved three cans of StarKist tuna, which revealed a Pez dispenser and a pack of 1999 Fleer baseball cards. It was magical.

Glen’s Restaurant is the last of a nearly extinct breed: the country store that serves as an isolated community’s only shopping center.XIX By necessity, such stores stock one of nearly every kind of item imaginable. However, for Glen, time has made all but the barest of necessities unavailable via suppliers, and thus he is left with whatever random trinkets he can acquire from whatever random salesmen come through the door.

There wasn’t

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