Now, here’s the thing you need to understand. Everybody in Beau’s family knows the story of how he was born. His mama tells it every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, every time somebody new comes to supper. How she went into labor two weeks early in the worst winter storm North Alabama had seen in years. How his daddy, rest his soul, was driving her to the hospital in Gadsden and they got stuck at the same exit by a wreck. How she had Beau “at a diner off the interstate, with a waitress holding my hand.” That was always how she said it. A waitress. She never knew her name. In all the commotion, the ambulance came and took them off and she never even got to say thank you. Charlene told me once that it bothered her for thirty years.
And all those years, Beau thought it was a sweet little legend. One of those stories that gets a little bigger every time it’s told. He used to roll his eyes when his mama started in on it. I’d heard it maybe ten times myself, and I’ll be honest, I always thought “Waffle House” was something she threw in to make people laugh.
