photo thursday: sign(s) o' the times

here's a double-photo to make up for the single definition on tuesday:

Both shots taken within minutes of each other, somewhere in northwestern FL just north of Chipley (a classic, quiet little town where "quiet" = overcome by heat and humidity).

Home of... meat!
(actual sign)

Someone clearly paid good money for this sign (it's not just mismatched letters on a reader board (see below)). And I love that it doesn't get specific. It's not "flame grilled chicken" or pork or beef, but "meat." Home of the Flame Grilled Meat!"

We actually ate here, and it wasn't bad, where "wasn't bad" = they didn't run us out or poison us.

I wouldn't say it was the best flame grilled meat I've ever had, but what can you do to meat with flame that ruins it? Other than burn it to a crisp. Which they did not do.

I always feel a bit awkward and out of place when I eat at some small local restaurant or drink at some small local bar (the latter a purely hypothetical scenario these days). I worry that I'm sitting in someone's regular spot and that all the locals are plotting ways to toss me out. And this was the panhandle of Florida, where they probably believe Obama is an alien and that Hawaii is not part of the U.S. And they are most certainly church-going folk and I always believe that it's printed on my forehead that I am something other than church-going. And this was around noon on Sunday, and everyone else had come directly from church with dresses and button down shirts shiny shoes and we were there in a corner in shorts and t-shirts and slippers and "unbeliever" tattooed on our faces.

But no one attacked us, and they put up with 4 squirming little girls. And they had bottomless sweet tea!

Cold Sunday BEER

(not the only one of these we saw)

There are many things I love about this sign, but first and foremost, the cold Sunday beer. As my brother-in-law said when he pointed out the sign, if it's worth mentioning, it's probably not that common. And he's from these parts (sorta), so he should know.

Or maybe it was actually "COLDSUNDAY BEER," meaning, they'd sell you beer on a cold Sunday. Kinda of like a cold day in hell, which, now that I'm remembering, it was about 95 F as we drove by that Sunday....

Then there's the unpunctuated "699" that warrants an entire line of its own and which I almost took for a reference to some bible verse (hey, this is the deep south and I'm feeling particularly heathen) but recently realized is probably the price for the pizza. Unless it's the price for....

a "Reese Milk Shake." The most uninteresting option is that this is just a shortened form of Reeses, as in Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. More appealing to me is something I came up with when I went into what M calls "writer mode:" The counter guy have a crush on Reese, who may or may not know this and may or may not reciprocate but who is at this very moment dressed up and sweating bullets in a church, not really listening to the preacher but rather thinking about having a milkshake, completely unaware that down the road a piece there's a sign with HER name on it, HER milkshake.

Or possibly she's thinking about a coldsunday beer.....