A BBQ joint on a Tuesday night is a bit out of the ordinary for us. The place is nearly empty, and by “nearly” I mean that the two of us were the only patrons inside the building.

Normally, this would NOT be a good sign. An empty restaurant and an empty parking lot at 7:00 in the evening don’t speak well. “No cars” usually means bad food.

But we both know differently. This joint has been around since about 1926. Local celebrities have sandwiches named after them. I’ve been here when you couldn’t find a table, and believe me, they’ve got plenty of tables.

The front doors are wooden and darkened by the touch of a thousand hands over the years. They remind me of office doors. Heavy. Vintage. Worn. A brass mail slot below the glass on the right side.

I reach out and push on the sign that says “PUSH.” We step across the threshold onto a checkerboard tile floor. The hinges screech like they haven’t been oiled since the day the door was hung.

“Slow Tuesday,” I say to the gal behind the counter.

“Yeah,” she says. “It gets this way once in a while.”

I look out across the room. There’s a sea of red-topped tables, each with 4 wooden chairs. It’s like she can read my mind.

“Y’all just sit wherever you want. We’ll find you.”

We’ve come here because we are both dawg-tired-tongue-hanging-out drained and whipped. If I had a pilot light, it would have been blown out about three days ago.

We fished at Lake Kissimmee for ten days. Then, we had three days off. But not three days to relax. We had three days to regroup and work to get ready to take two camper trailers to Lake Martin. We wanted the kids and grandkids to spend some portion of their spring breaks with us.

In the middle of all that there was a bunch of cooking, cleaning, prepping, washing, planning, grocery buying, game playing, fishing, driving, eating, sorta-sleeping, crying, praying, bathing, walking, long breathing, itty-bitty cussing, and fixing stuff. Rewind and repeat.

Marion said to me, and this is for the record in case I ever need a defense attorney, “If I ever decide to do two trips like this back-to-back again, please tell me I’m stupid.”

I don’t know why she would say that. I never . . . uh . . . once . . . hmm . . . ever thought that this . . . uh . . . was (shhhh!!!) a stupid idea.

Anyway, we’re tired. We drove the campers home a day early because we were worn out. Plus, coming home early would give us more time to unload and clean up without being rushed.

So, after all the boxes, bags, totes, kayaks, cookstoves, tents, fishing poles, hammocks, chairs, toys, paddles, and coolers had been put away, I said to her, “How about I take you out to eat?”

She was not disagreeable.

We grabbed two chairs in the far corner. On the wall above us were black & white pictures of people like Newt Gingrich who had eaten here once upon a time. Politicians in suits and ties.

Next to Newt was a sketch of Alan Jackson, hometown boy gone bigtime Nashville. And last but not least, the infamous AJC writer, child of Moreland, Georgia, Lewis Grizzard. His penciled caricature hung on the wall above our table, with a mouthful of “the best sammich you ever put’n ya mouth.”

From our seat in the corner, it looks like the restaurant tonight is in the hands of a few playful teenagers. Surely, there’s a grown-up person in the kitchen. I can’t tell.

A young man comes our way. Decent haircut. Red T-shirt. His blue jeans are clean, and they don’t have any holes in them.

“How y’all doing tonight?” His voice is strong, and his eye contact impressive.

“You need a menu? Can I get you something to drink while you think about your order?”

I like this kid. I’m betting he’s got a pretty good grip on what he wants to do in life.

“No sir,” I say back. “No menus. Just bring us two Lewis Grizzard specials and two sweet teas.”

“Coming right up. I’ll be back with your sweet tea in a minute.”

There are two other teenage boys working tonight. One is bussing tables, wiping down counters where no one has sat because the place is empty. The other one is sweeping the floor, working around chairs that have not been used. The three of them are chatting it up and joking around the entire time.

Our waiter brings us our drinks. No jokes. No fool’n around. He’s all business. Polite, and to the point.

But when he walks through the doorway to the other side of the restaurant, the three of them are sparring over something.

“I can’t believe you took that seriously.”

“Man, if you hadn’t forgot to delete that off your phone, I would have never known.”

“Dude, you really had me going.”

He actually said “Dude”.

They’re slapping each other with kitchen towels, bumping each other shoulder to shoulder, and the banter is lively.

The waiter returns with our food.

I can’t resist. “Hey, you young fellas are having way too much fun over there.”

Mr. polite-and-serious-about-my-job waiter pulls out a chair, sits down and proceeds to tell us the whole story. These three guys were eyeing a cute girl that was in the restaurant earlier. The big one was too shy to go ask for her number. Our waiter, after the girl left, wrote a phone number and drew a heart on a napkin.

“For the guy in the grey T-shirt,” he wrote.

“I tried to write in girly letters,” he said.

The big guy was gullible enough to think that girls still write notes on napkins to goofy teenage boys who don’t have a chance and who still laugh at jokes about flatulence.

Our waiter was very animated with every detail. Then he apologized for taking up our time and headed back to work. His buddies were eyeing us from a distance.

I turned to Marion and said, “It does me good to know that there’s still some no-nonsense kids in this world. No outlandish tats and no unspeakable piercings. Just plain kids.”

“They know how to work, too,” she said. “They’re having a good time, but they’re getting their work done. They’re not just goofing off.”

I finished my stew, sammich and most of my onion rings. Marion, who really only came for the onion rings, ate her stew, onion rings, and finished my onion rings. She wrapped her sammich in foil to take home.

I’m glad we came here tonight. For one thing, Marion needed a break. She’s been cooking for an army non-stop for almost three weeks.

For another thing, I figure if this joint can leave a hundred years of tradition and fine food in the hands of a few promising teenagers on a Tuesday night, maybe this old world is not in as much trouble as we think it might be.

Suddenly, I’m not so tired anymore.