Poteat
Lower on this page, my friend Matt Matthews celebrates the joys of a home-cooked meal, particularly when the cook is your mother.
I can’t argue with a word he writes.
My own momma was a heaven-sent artist in the kitchen, although, like Matt’s mother, she eschewed anything fancy.
Fried chicken and country-style steak were her specialties, and the chicken gravy she made to accompany her fried bird was especially delicious.
For all the appeal of a home-cooked meal, sitting down in a restaurant and letting someone else do the cooking — and the serving, and the clearing, and the dish washing — has its charms as well.
The Poteats didn’t eat out a whole lot when I was a lad. The family budget prohibited any kind of lavish cash outflow display. But my mother did catch a break most Sundays after church and on the occasional Friday or Saturday night.
Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite restaurants from those long-ago days:
Starting close to home, it was hard to beat Mom ‘n’ Pops Ham House on Mountain View Drive in Drexel. Best country ham I’ve ever eaten, dished up with mashed potatoes and creamed corn. So good, so good, so good!
The Old Man always loved a fried fish plate, replete with crispy french fries and creamy coleslaw. He was a flounder man — bone-in, my mother preferred perch, and at an early age I developed an affinity for catfish fillets.
The first fish place at which I remember dining was the Millstone Fish Camp, just south of Valdese.
The Millstone was owned by Sheriff David Oaks. And, although Oaks was a Republican and the Old Man a Democrat, the pair were fast friends, and the Old Man loved going there on a Saturday night.
After Oaks was killed in action and the Millstone was no longer in business, the Poteat family fish joint of choice became the Starlight Fish House on Amherst Road between Drexel and Morganton.
The Starlight was mobbed on Friday and Saturday nights back in the day, the customers drawn by good food and bountiful helpings. Long after the Old Man died, I would take my mother there for Friday night supper.
A couple of Drexel-area restaurants which the Poteats frequented were owned by legendary restaurateur Herb Townsend.
I’m not sure of the name of the first Townsend-owned restaurant, at the lower Drexel intersection where El Patron now stands, but I think it was the White House Grill. (If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly stand corrected.)
The house specialty at both the White House Grill and Herb’s Drive-in, later at the upper Drexel intersection, was appropriately listed on the menu as Herb’s Special.
Herb’s Special was pretty simple — tender country-style steak and gravy, served on a large open-faced bun, with a generous helping of mashed potatoes on the side.
It was, in retrospect, the perfect meal for a growing teenager — nothing but meat, potatoes, salt, and fat in profusion. Nothing green. Nothing good for you. Just good.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll pair a couple of downtown Morganton restaurants together in this walk down memory lane.
The lunch counters at the downtown Woolworth and the downtown Roses were a scarce 30 yards apart on Union Street.
Although called the lunch counter, I can remember going to breakfast with the Old Man at Roses on Saturday mornings and then sneaking off to look through the latest 45s while he drank his coffee and smoked a cigarette or two.
Woolworth offered basic burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, and tomato soup for lunch, but the real highlight there was the milkshakes. Creamy, cold, and thick enough to be eaten with a spoon.
My final memory is of the Twin Circle Grill on East Union Street where Happy Taco stands today.
Look up “Greasiest of Spoons” in your ancient copy of Webster’s and a photo of the Twin Circle Grill will be there.
The tiny place was cramped, smoky, and not especially clean.
But in my estimation, the best cheeseburgers in Morganton were sacked up there — sacked up to be eaten someplace cleaner, quieter, and with a higher health rating.
Sad thing … were it still open, the Twin Circle Grill would be right on my way home from work each day.
I would go home a happy man many an afternoon.
And, I’d weigh at least 327 pounds.
Maybe that’s the trade-off we all make somewhere along the way. The places of our youth — the ones that fed us well and sent us home smelling faintly of grease and happiness — don’t last forever, at least not in brick and mortar.
But they stick around where it counts. Every bite of good fried chicken, every forkful of fish and hushpuppies, every too-thick milkshake brings them back for just a moment.
And truth be told whether it came from my momma’s stove or a well-worn grill down the road, it was never just about the food. It was about who you shared it with — and that, thankfully, is something time can’t clear off the table.
