Nu-Way’s more about being a melting pot than it is a place for a patty melt.Įvery idiot running for elected office has visited. Johnny Cash came on, followed by the Pogues. Up by the door sat two white and two black men, laughing, pointing up at the TV. A lawyer came in talking about how he didn’t want another day like this one. A group of men and women sporting nice tattoos showed up soon thereafter. We’d met in Oxford, Mississippi, nine years earlier, before he took a job in the art department at Converse College. A man named Andrew Blanchard said, “Welcome to Spartanburg, George,” from behind me at a table. So-and-So still taught at the seminary, and they might’ve started talking about Faulkner, Derrida, and various conferences involving Methodists. This bar used to be different before they changed the drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one, back in 1986 or so.” A man on the other side of Mark said, “I went to Wofford. Red Myers’s son was a pharmacist who went by Dubb. The man to the left of me said, “My daddy was a Hall of Fame basketball coach,” and I said, “Coach Red Myers?” and he said, “Yeah,” and I said, “I met your sister one time at a bar in Hodges called Jackson Station.” I learned this information because I’ll talk to ants inhabiting the crack of a sidewalk, and I sat down saying to anyone who might listen, “Hey. Andrew had come back home to work as a chaplain at one of the hospitals. He was a friend of Becky’s family, and she needed some help behind the grill. The man behind the grill, Andrew, had just graduated from Duke seminary. I’ll admit that some of the story so far has been filled with hyperbole, but this part’s not: I said, “Sure,” lying, because I didn’t go to seminary. My dog Dooley helped out as best he could, on weekends and late workday afternoons. I immediately started painting what would become my office-that’s another story that involves a jungle mural on the walls with giraffes, rhinos, lions, tigers, gorillas, Jesus, lemurs, a dachshund, fish, flora, Noah’s crashed ark on Mount Ararat, elephants, and an eagle on the ceiling-and then began moving books and books and books. My better half, Glenda, and I bought a house in mid-March. Last year I accepted a position in the English department at Wofford College, in Spartanburg. In between is the Classic Cheeseburger Salad.Īside #2-people who “can still smell smoke in there” usually drive cars that emit toxic gases, and they need to move into a hole in the ground, or to Antarctica. Other times someone in the group would blurt out, “I need a salad!” or “It’s too smoky in there!” or-even after Spartanburg banned smoking in restaurants and bars-“I can still smell smoke in there!”Īs an aside, there are five salad options on the menu, from Classic House to Cobb. Instead the table talk concerned lesser-known short stories of William Faulkner, the postmodern musings of Jacques Derrida, tales of what someone said or did at the last writers’ conference. Sometimes my hosts indulged me, but these were usually English department–type people, so there was no casual conversation at the bar. At times I needed to come to Spartanburg for book signings or readings, and always I said, “Hey, can we go to Nu-Way, can we go to Nu-Way, can we go to Nu-Way?” which, perhaps, irritated my hosts in ways that New Yorkers understand when visitors plead to visit the Statue of Liberty or Charlestonians when it comes to Market Street and the Hunley submarine. I had frequented Nu-Way six or eight times over a twenty-year period, back when I lived in Dacusville, South Carolina, some fifty miles away. There are a couple of old-fashioned pinball machines, and one of those bowling games. There’s the red front door, a bar with a handful of tables running its length, a “dining room” to the side, and an outdoor patio behind the place protected by a wooden fence. The wine list goes like this: “red, white, or pink.” It’s pretty well known that Nu-Way celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary last year, on its original spot at 373 East Kennedy Street in downtown Spartanburg, South Carolina. There’s PBR, Miller, Bud, and then-for the more adventurous-Corona, Guinness, and Red Stripe. There’s the Blu-Way chicken sandwich, and the Nu-Wayler fish sandwich. Regulars know about the White Trash Burger with jalapeños, and the Trailer Park Burger on buttered toast. Everyone’s heard about the Nu-Way Lounge & Restaurant’s Redneck Cheeseburger served with a secret-recipe pimento cheese atop the patty-it’s won awards, and been featured both in national print media and on television.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |