Travels in a Tin Can

safety) was our most efficient waiter, than there were others who were more
entertaining and friendly. Three spring instantly to mind. First, an elderly
woman in Sacramento in the retro dining chain Johnny Rocket's. These diners
are very cool, and very cheesy, featuring juke boxes on each table. Our
waitress obviously loved her job and took great delight in bringing us ketchup
not in a bottle but squeezed out to make a smiley face on a small dish...I
wanted to preserve it as a souvenir but sanity - and Emma’s hunger - won out.
The waitress also offered to go shopping with our credit card. Cute, or
criminal?
The funniest thing she did was, we think, unintentional. We both
ordered BLT sandwiches (this was before the infamous BLT incident in the
Florida Keys, back in the days when having a Bacon Lettuce and Tomato
sandwich was an innocent experience, free from the risks of being brought a
plate of bananas by mistake) and our waitress asked what bread we wanted.
The choices were communicated as 'wah, wah, wah, and rye'. Bemused we
plumped for the second choice - white, we hoped.
The second most memorable eccentric waiter was in a Denny's in
Bakersfield. Statistically we should have encountered many more bizarre
servers in this chain, given the number of times we visited. However, most of
the staff was much of a muchness, with 'too busy to interact' being the
defining characteristic in most cases. On this occasion a young man, whose
friendliness was as welcome as it was unexpected, waited us on. He got very
excited by the fact that we were British not, for a change, so he could discuss
Lady Diana, but because it meant he had an accent. Curiously he, a
Californian, had always wanted to sound ‘different’ and now, to us, he did. We