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Ah, Paradise! Heaven on earth! You know what I’m talking about: those excruciatingly beautiful tropical islands paved with white sands, hung with perfect blue skies, and gently tickled by balmy breezes. The kind of destinations that make for brochure art and travel magazine covers guaranteed to draw wistful sighs from pale, cubicle-penned office veal.
But what those brochures don’t tell you is this: Paradise is boring.
Heresy, you say? Not so fast. Before you break out the tar, feathers, and torches, just take a moment to consider how long you could be happy finger-forking Spam kebabs and starchy, pounded mystery roots off banana leaves.
Or did you imagine that you could live on breathtaking views and Mai Tais alone? Try that and you’ll end up so hammered that you won’t be able to tell a tropical sunset from a trash fire and you’ll wind up with second degree burns on inconvenient parts of your anatomy when your sarong catches fire after you try to embrace the beauty of it all. Trust me, I know.
My idea of paradise is somewhat more prosaic. Give me a town that has its priorities in order. And I don’t mean clean air and bike lanes and green municipal services (although I like those too). I mean biscuits.
Unfettered access to biscuits — and good biscuits, mind you, not the indifferent flour-clods that masquerade as biscuits — is a prerequisite for any town wishing to call itself habitable. Sadly, by that definition, most of the world is a biscuitless wasteland.
Durham, North Carolina (where the photo was taken) is the kind of place I’m talking about. Sure, it may have its problems, but look closer and you’ll see that it’s a town that can have these two competing houses of worship across the street from each other and manage to get along just fine.
Priorities, my friends, priorities.
There are many fine biscuits to be had here in Charleston, SC (a very habitable town indeed), but I do miss the Biscuitville restaurants of North Carolina and Virginia. To them, biscuits are more than a business, they’re a mandate: there are over 50 different kinds on the menu, including the legendary Fried Chicken and Gravy biscuit and the outre Pork Chop Club biscuit.
Recently, they had a big promotion to herald the return of their Fried Bologna biscuit. How could you not love a place like that?
And I really love the name. Like Pie Town, New Mexico, Biscuitville just sounds like a place where one could live happily ever after. It inspires in me thoughts of a town hung with blue skies dotted with puffy, white, biscuit-clouds; one where the smiling townsfolk are gently tickled by warm, biscuit-scented breezes.
It’s enough to make a desk-bound fella sigh wistfully…
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December 1st, 2010 at 9:02 pm
biscuits are my VERY FAVORITE food. and you’re right - they are perfect!