In this Age of the American it's hard to find America anymore. The main roads are like museums lined with doorways where every door leads to a place to eat for instance, but you never get a good vibe in these portals where you see America; either the food will kill ya say in some fast food joint where pounds of transfat fuel the entrées or the environment will in one of these stiff dining places and the majority of Americans lap up both forms of death with indifference' even an eagerness or thoughtlessness or unique incarnations of nihilism. That's just the thing; it's hard to put your finger on these beastly characteristics- all so different all so much the same, all a blur. You'd think we see this commin', an entire nation being swallowed up by big business and everyone 'taking the ride' with no questions about where its going or what they'll find or be the end of it.


When a friend of mine and me are out looking for a meal we're looking for something better, we're not going to pay to sit in silent misery and take the shit that sterile establishments organized like Mangele's examination room have to offer. It's more trouble today in these warring states to get away from all that and sit, eat, talk, without The Fear that Hunter S. Thompson always talked about finding its way in to almost any situation. But my friend and me do it- we're not going to live that way all but half dead and shoveling shit. We enjoy our meal!


We find great old forgotten places without folk all trying to live according to the mass media, No! Real people eat there and nobody gives ya a second look lest ya ask them. Places like the Roadhouse or Nick's Diner.


I'm really here to talk about Nick's so now I'm going to write about Nick's. First Nick's is an old trailer converted over into a diner that's wedged between a slate outcropping and the street that flows in a curve and when you're at the center of the curve you're at the center of Nick's. At nick's there's no parking lines, no handicapped, no mothers to be parking, no women with children parking, you just fuckin' park and you're in. You enter out of the dust of the road at the end of this trailer that nobody knows any history about anyway and you make your way to the counter if you're gonna do it right.


Great Counter looks like its been in the process of being worn in for 40 years, that 50's aquamarine polished down to brown in some spots where there's been elbows and plates and mugs. Immediately you're connected to a whole assortment of people who ages hence, like yourself chose a certain stool at a certain counter to sit at and grab a meal at Nick's. They got mugs for sale and the money gets slid into an envelope tucked away behind the register.


At Nick's you find an America that I thought was long disappeared from the side of the dusty road of some ruined city. It's alive, unnamable, but it's here in this land for nurses, rail workers, and us who find the need to look. The people who eat at Nick's are a tired people, you see it on there faces an entire life span in need of a rest and in just 30 minutes at some rare counter they breathe a sigh in front of a simple menu and a hot meal where they can rest there shoulders at that moment and let it all hang. Ahhhhh. You hear things at Nick's, you here America chiming her song, things like 'bad road, hell, I've been going down a bad road since 1969'�. We The People was the beginning of this whole thing and the people is what still make up this territory, its filled with us, and it is our heart our pain that is heard on the edges of the center where we can all come to hear our selves. A place like Nick's allows this you find happy people, people down on there luck in need of a hot cup of coffee, you find road types who find a Nick's in every state off the interstate in the dust serving meals, you find a whole lot of workers who keep it all going on and on and on. My only question is how long, how long before the whole thing gives out, how long before we just can't keep it up; all this progress that leaves so many behind. This is why Nick's is so important because what we find is no mere diner, but something that's in us and we leave a 5-dollar tip on a 10-dollar meal and say have a good day before we leave and everybody says thanks or so long. Yea, we like Nick's.


When I think of Nick's I think of some desert oasis out of time that flows alone amidst an entire nation in thirst. There's very little that's real in America today and you find out of all this phantasmagoria a world that you can't recognize, understanding is always one step away.


I find elsewhere, beyond Nick's, beyond the dusty outposts, is what has become the common place to eat, this idea of professionalism that pervades existence- it's inescapable. The professional is something I find to be a burden, a heavy load to live under, this skin of corporate appearances. You find it in how people dress, how people examine one another sizing up each others bank accounts, how the front of the house has to put on a ridged air while Mexicans slop around in the back, how phony America has become with the money idea factoring into everything. The Sterilizing of the World. With everybody buying into this professional atmosphere who's being personal, who's being their own David with these corporate Goliath's, who's making an honest human connection instead of maneuvering like solitary rats scratching at the street. If we can't connect as one human to another what's it all for. To remove human connection from life is a tragic consequence. Human connections are the Source; get it, or as I said as a kid 'catch my drift'. If there is anything holy that happens on this tired old earth it is two hearts beating in unison with words or eyes or hands, two souls reaching into a bag of jewels that is the Heart. If there is anything real or worth remembering it is these moments in life where there is no us or them only a we. Clocks chiming in together the hour it is, more real than any plastic credit card application you get in the mail, more real than any hellish hot air from some bedeviled politician. Holy.


This is why my friend and me eat at Nick's 'Order What You Want, Eat What You Get', 'Order What You Want Take It Or Leave It'. All the bullshit and the mind-tethered world can be left at the door. Coffee and real diner food from a mom and pop continues to feed the American Heart.

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