“Hi, I’m Brandon. I’m one of the cooks here. I’ve seen you here before; you come in and have breakfast every other week or so, don’t you?”

“Hi, they call me ER. Yeah, I like this kind of mom-and-pop place. I believe in supporting my local merchants, and your food’s got Denny’s and Waffle House beat all to hell! I like the atmosphere, I know the regulars and I can flirt with the waitresses, too. I try to drop in whenever I’m in this part of town. Are these folks all in your family?”

“We try. We use real eggs, not powdered, and we peel and cut our own home fries, none of those frozen jobbies. Those are real hominy grits, too, not from a mix. And yes, my mom and her sister run the place, Grandpa started the business, and some day I’m going to run it, and maybe my kid, too, when he grows up, God willing.”

“I wish you luck. But you know its an uphill fight. You have to compete with the big chains, even though their food all tastes like cardboard and the help are all surly underpaid teenagers who get treated like crap, who pass it on to their customers and would rather be somewhere else. Places like this used to be the way it was everywhere. Now you hardly see them any more.”

“I know. Everything is messed up, You can’t make a living any more on account of the economy and the big companies, and prices and taxes are always going up. Nothing works and the government is all screwed up. And what’s with the weather? Here it is, almost May and it was in the 50s when I got up this morning. They say there’s nothing to that global warming, but I don’t know. It’s either too hot or too cold any more, and this drought just keeps getting worse.”

Don’t believe that ‘no global warming’ crap. They’re just trying to get you to look the other way. It’s real, all right, and its getting worse. There’s just too many rich people out there who’ll lose money if we try to do anything about it, and they’ll fight tooth and nail to cover it up and pretend nothing’s happening.”

“Tell me about it. So what’s gonna happen, are we going to get an ice age, or is the world becoming a hot jungle, will Florida wind up under water?”

“Probably not, at least not right away. Things will probably stay more or less the same, overall change will be gradual but the weather will be different, and more violent and changeable, and farmers will have to grow crops in different places, or plant different crops. It’s happened before, naturally, throughout history, but this time it will be faster, and this time its going to be someone’s fault. And the result will be economic trouble, political trouble, shortages, wars and revolutions. But it won’t happen all at once, so most folks won’t guess what’s happening and no one making money off it will have to stop what they’re doing. And you know what they’ll tell you: trust us, we know what we’re doing, nothing’s happeneing, leave it to us, everything will be ok.”

“Yeah, we get plenty of that, all right. Economic trouble and war, eh? Seems like it’s started already. Except it ain’t just the weather. Well, breaktime is over, I’ve got to get back in the kitchen. It’s been nice talking to you, ER. You come again.”

“So long, Brandon. And I will.”