about 3.00pm but when we left we were convinced that the town must have its
own time zone - all the staff kept saying ‘How are you tonight?’ And ‘What
can I get you tonight?’ The food was very good and the service fine - if a little
eccentric, we were given huge carving knives to cut our sandwiches. What
really captured our attention were the other customers. Hopefully they did not
represent a cross-section of American society, but subsequent evidence
suggested they were common for small-town America. First, you had the
permanent resident, a guy sitting at the counter paying for his food in quarters
- in a manner suggesting that he did this each and every day - and
meandering back and forth chatting to other regulars. Second, there was a
group of two adults and two children all wearing matching camouflage caps,
jackets and dungarees. Finally, there was the guy who just stared at us the
whole time - something we got very used to during our travels.
Our perception of Crescent City being small-town America (and a little
backward even for small towns) was confirmed shortly after we left Denny's.
We decided to go to the cinema as the weather had turned and it was raining.
Our conversation with the woman who sold us our tickets went something like
this:
‘Oh we don’t take credit cards - we're not that modern here’ the server
informed us as she smiled in a grandmotherly way. Then she added ‘What's
with the British accent?’
To which the reply was obvious ‘Well, we're British’