Truck Stop Blues

Every once in awhile I weary of the timid collations that characterize L.A.’s pretentious Westside bistros and long for a place that serves chili on its eggs.

I don’t want no foie de veau and I don’t want ecrevisse de mer . I wanna dig into a mess o’ beans and greasy bacon with coffee strong enough to run an 18-wheeler, and then maybe have a chunk of brown banana pie.

For some reason, I can’t explain why, I get this urge right in the middle of my aspic salad to say to hell with the bistro and chow down where the truckers eat.

That is not to say they necessarily eat better than everyone else, but there is a kind of reality to a truck stop restaurant one does not feel, say, in L’Ermitage.

You’ll find people in Castaic’s Cafe Mike, for instance, who don’t know a goose liver pate from peanut butter, but they can kick a loaded semi down the road like a kid pumping a scooter. I like that.

I was raised in a working-class neighborhood where a trucker’s status was only slightly lower than a parish priest’s. We ate slabs of things in those days, not slices, and poured ketchup on everything from fried chicken to tapioca pudding.

Nothing was left on the plate when we were done eatin’ and mama considered it high praise if we gave the bowl a lick when the soup was gone.

I have long since stopped licking soup bowls and I don’t pour things from a bottle on delicately sauced oeufs sur le plat, but I am not immune to the truck stop blues.

I can hear the air horns blowin’ like music down a highway in the night.

I heard ‘em for real the other day as my wife and I were tooling south on I-5 after a week of visiting family. I was driving her blue Nissan pickup over the Grapevine pretending I was hauling dry bulk out of Delano when she said, “You want to eat at Mike’s?”

I couldn’t believe I’d heard right. She wasn’t raised in a blue-collar neighborhood but in a house with a maid, and would rather dance naked for bikers in hell than pour ketchup on her eggs.

“You were having a nightmare?” I said pleasantly, honking at a guy in a Zacky Farms semi that went rolling by.

“No,” she said, “I’m just aware you need your mess o’ beans once in a while. Maybe you’d like to stop and get a tattoo first.”

What a woman. She knows I like hanging out with truckers and does it for me. Only once have I seen her annoyed in a truck stop. It was at a place near Buttonwillow where a cowboy played “Okie From Muskogee” eight times in a row on the juke box.

“If he plays that one more time,” she said in a voice that could be heard all the way to Tulsa, “I’m going to kick out his lights.”

The guy had arms longer than his legs and the look of someone who considered “Okie From Muskogee” a kind of religious anthem, so I led her out before her words reached his brain. Fortunately, that took awhile.

“Did you notice,” she said later, “how he growled when he ate?”

Anyway, we ended up at the Cafe Mike, which is just off Castaic’s Lake Hughes Road, across from the Country Girl Saloon.

The place has been there for more than 20 years and sees the same truckers all year ‘round. Guys like Dixie Doug and the twins, A. J. and Don.

Don, or maybe it’s A. J. (they’re identical) has a train whistle on his rig and blows it as he drives up. When someone hears the whistle, they put in an order for ham and eggs over medium, because that’s all he ever eats.

All you have to do is order the first time you come in, waitress Kristie Gastineau says, and never order again if you want. They’ll just keep serving you the same thing forever.

The truckers plunk themselves down at tables or booths and eat with their hats on, the way they do at home, I guess. Then they ask for the ketchup and order food.

I got Mike’s Special for the day, two large eggs with chili, beans and tortillas for $5.90. My wife had coffee and spent most of the time watching me eat, the way Kathleen Turner watched Michael Douglas in “War of the Roses.”

Kristie says you’ve got to have a real good personality to be a waitress in Mike’s. She compares it to Mel’s Diner in the old television series. “We’re family,” she says, “and the guys who come in are characters.”

They sure are. One of them told a joke about a bullfrog and a duck that still has me laughing.

As we left, my wife said, “Well, did you enjoy your . . . er . . . chow?”

“Sure did, Truck Stop Baby.”

“Good,” she said. “Now let’s kick the rig on home, shall we?”

I got back on to Eye-5 going south, chuckling about the bull frog and the duck, and imagining I was hauling veau on the hoof out of Wyoming.