Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Mr. Peabody’s Coal Train

I woke. It was Sunday. Went to church. It was outside. Outside church is interesting. We, and most everyone else, brought lawn chairs to sit on. Those who did not bring lawn chairs sat on folding chairs that were claimed from the church’s secret folding chair stockpile. After the service I watched people putting the chairs away so now I know where the folding chairs are stored. This fall when we join the congregation and receive a tour of the church grounds we will likely see the wine cellar, the holy water cistern and the folding chair shed. I’ll probably say something like, “Let’s keep it moving. I’ve seen this before.”

I digress.

We were at church, on the lawn. There were some trees. So naturally everyone picked the shady spots first since it was 11:00 and 85 degrees. As I write this, I wonder if as Christians we should have sat in the sunny places first and allowed the later arriving people to sit in the shade. I would like to claim that I sat in the sun for the benefit of others, but in fact it was because I arrived too late to get a good shady spot. So putting my education to work I sat in a spot where I knew the shade was going. Sadly, the service was too short to allow my plan to come to fruition. I was barely half shaded during the benediction. It was not a cleverly placed mid-service benediction either. It was tucked away, right at the end, like it was supposed to be. I have never complained that a church service was too short and this seems to be a silly place to start. So I wont. What I will comment on is the fact that we all sat down with our own chairs and placed them in what we felt were ideal viewing locations and for some reason we ended up forming rows. It was as though we missed the pews to such a degree that we formed our own makeshift versions of them.

Thus, a nagging question is: Is forming rows at a venue such as the aforementioned one a natural occurrence, either beneficial or not, or is this something we have been programmed to do?

Afterwards we went to Dell’s Diner. If you are ever in Waverly Iowa at breakfast or lunchtime I recommend eating at this fine establishment. They are not open for supper. It’s the kind of small town diner that you just don’t see much any more. They serve good, tasty food at a reasonable price and the service was down-home and friendly. It’s sad the time I have wasted passing the place by to eat at some other box of ticky-tacky restaurant when this was right under my nose.

Matt has written a wonderful bit about the Walmartization of the world. That’s where the “ticky-tacky” reference is from.

If we are naturally inclined to sit in rows then it makes sense why Dell’s Diner has no more than 12 tables and at least four of them were empty when we arrived at the peak of the lunch rush, and our McDonalds is always nearly full at the same time of day. Next time Matt is in town perhaps we can go eat there and he can talk about how he used to eat at the diner that occupied the same location prior to Dell’s and maybe the one prior to that. Perhaps we could also cover the topic of exactly how big the world’s largest shovel is.