Dear World: I Am at a Truck Stop Diner

And I really don't know what to say about these placemats

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

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Sunday, Christmas Eve, 2023.

I am eating at a truck stop diner. There are paper placemats. They are all advertising bee pollen. “Sold at this restaurant. Only $19.95 each.”

The bee pollen guy shows up every month. He brings more placemats. He doesn’t pay anything to put them there. The diner just wants free placemats.

I fantasize about ousting him from his throne. One day, bee pollen guy will come and they’ll tell him: “sorry, we’ve gone in a different direction.” His eyes will fall. His shoulders will slump. And my placemats will be there instead.

My placemats will be the best placemats. They’ll be thick and they’ll be luxe and they’ll have modern color palettes & sans-serif fonts & stylish watercolor illustrations of expensive-looking flowers, like my friend Marta paints, who has been featured in places like Oprah Magazine and Better Homes & Gardens and One King’s Lane, and now a truck stop diner off of Route 81.

This will become my NICHE. I’ll become the truck stop diner placemat girl. I’ll create a billion-dollar empire. I’ll modernize this long-forgotten industry and have friends all across America named “Barb.”

I ask the server what she thinks.

She tells me she loves the thin, stupid paper ones: “When you’re the one taking out the garbage, you want ‘em as thin as possible.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

***

I keep saying “happy holidays” to everyone, and then worry I’ve outed myself. Only liberals say “happy holidays.” Everyone here says “Merry Christmas.”

But, I secretly like saying “Merry Christmas.” Feels nostalgic, like I am in fourth grade.

***

There is no pizza delivery here, so I don’t know what I’m going to do when the raviolis flop. No pizza delivery, no Uber eats, none of the conveniences I am used to. I think about how I once used an app to order three men to come over to my house to move a giant dresser to my third floor walk-up in Philly. The app was called Dolly. I liked that app.

***

I know all of my neighbors now. There’s Mickey and Ronnie and Roger and Amy and Bob and Adele and Brandon and Josh and Sabrina. I have good neighbors. Much better than any neighbors I’ve ever had: they actually seem neighborly. Last night I met a new one, Matt, who grew up in the area but then spent the last 30 years in California and now he’s back. Josh and Sabrina have a similar story: they’re also from the area but built a career in Philadelphia working in historic architecture (!!!), and now they travel back and forth on weekends. They brought me a gift basket filled with Philly beer and pickled green beans, which are outrageously spicy. I can tell we’re going to be friends. Do you ever feel like people’s personalities coincide with their tolerance for spice? I tell them “happy holidays” and feel like it’s the right thing to say.

***

Another neighbor came by the other day to introduce himself. Told me if I stepped foot over the property line into his woods, he’d shoot me dead. He was kidding, of course, he laughed! Then he managed to slip it in again. Before he left, however, he had a request: he’d like access to an old road I have going through my woods. The old road takes him to a part of his property that is otherwise inaccessible. I told him I’d shoot him dead. (Kidding, of course!)

This is still neighborly.

***

There are way too many colored lights around here. Colored lights are always tacky unless you know how to do them right. But perhaps the worst offender is mixing warm yellow lights with cool LED lights. I cannot let this slide.

***

A friend has come again for the firewood. He takes the chainsaw into my woods and cuts the fallen logs into one-foot pieces and then throws them into a dump trailer he’s borrowing. He tells me that each load will heat his house for a month. So far, he has taken eight loads.

***

Realize I left yesterday’s chili out in the crockpot. Shit.

***

Make a card for Christopher the Trash Guy. Put a $50 bill inside. Tape it to a bottle of peperoncino garlic olive oil I bought from a specialty shop. A nice bottle of olive oil is my favorite thing to gift this year: when else are you going to get one of those? All of us are living in Great Value Extra Virgin Olive Oil hell. Getting a nice bottle of olive oil is like getting a designer purse when you are forty. I don’t know if Christopher the Trash Guy is forty, but he once told me he had a lot of pig in his freezer, so I assume he likes to eat just as much as I do. So I tape the bottle and the card to the top of the trash bin, complete with ribbon and bow. No one steals it. That doesn’t stop me from looking out the window every few minutes to make sure, of course, but this is one of the pluses of being in rural America: never having to worry some asshat is going to steal your trash man’s olive oil.

***

My Christmas tree is a blue spruce. This thing is a model. So much so, I bought two of them: one for the big picture window in the front of the farmhouse, and one for the porch of the cabin. I strung them both with warm white lights (obviously), and then made a giant wreath for the side of the house. And the front door. And the back door. And then I strung those with lights. Don’t want anyone around here thinking I’m a dickhead.

***

Went to mail a present at the post office. Came to a stop sign. Car was passing. I never look at other drivers, but for some reason decided to. It was my high school sweetheart. He smiled at me, closed mouth, because he has no teeth.

***

High school sweetheart now works for the guy who is coming to tear down my barn. The barn is historic, but half of it was washed away in a flood. Now it’s just an eyesore.

Legally I must have “do not trespass” signs up, in case some kid walks in there and falls and dies.

***

I wish there were a wine bar.

***

Ran into an old high school friend at the grocery store. I was wearing black Celine sunglasses, a long white fleece, navy leggings, and my tie-up black & white Ilse Jacobsen boots. “Look at you, Housewives of Beverly Hills!” she exclaimed. “Merry Christmas!” I said back.

***

Get an unexpected email from the trash company: we’ve received your request for an extra recycling bin. We’ll be delivering it to you next week.

***

A friend assures me the neighbor was definitely kidding: you can’t shoot someone just for walking on your property. (Duh.) They have to be inside your house. That is why a guy in the next town over went to jail: the perpetrator was on his porch, not inside the house.

Somehow this is not reassuring.

***

Can’t remember if pasta needs to dry or not before cooking. I think it does; when I was living in Costa Rica, I made it with C, and they all stuck together in the pot. Am trying not to make same mistake, but the problem is that they’re raviolis. In my mind, you cut the dough, plop in some filling, put more dough on top, pinch ‘em together…and then? Boil? Or will they all stick together? These are the things I should Google.

***

Don’t know where I got the idea raviolis are for Christmas Eve. My mom grew up in a Seven Fishes kind of household, but I didn’t like fish as a kid, so she stopped making it. Did she replace with ravioli? Is that why I’m so hellbent on making this dish?

***

I have my mom here in the house. It’s weird. Her ashes have been with her best friend for the last twenty years. Didn’t want to put her in storage. Now I’m not sure what room a dead parent goes in.

***

I bought backup raviolis at the store. Frozen ones. Round ones. I don’t like the round ones as much, but there were no other options.

Also bought shells, in case THOSE are bad.

Hmmmm, I think. Maybe I do have OCD.

***

The truck stop diner is open 24/7. Have been there at least four times. I used to spend a hundred bucks on oysters & wine; now I spend ten bucks on eggs & coffee.

I am full of backup plans.

***

Still wondering what would happen if I started my placemat empire. What if you were given a 12-inch by 18-inch square to proclaim something to the world? What would you say? What things matter to you enough to say them? What if you had one shot to say something meaningful—before the sausage gets served and grease stains the front and the server throws it away?

What would you put on your placemat?

Note: this is not actually a question about placemats.

Happy fucking holidays.

Love,

Ash