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Tuesday, May. 12, 2009

Waffle House remains a popular eatery for midstate teens

For Middle Georgia teens who like to spend their late nights at local Waffle Houses, the scattered, smothered and covered hash browns aren’t what hooks them.

“One time I was at Waffle House, and this crazy thing happened,” said David Moses, a junior at Central High School.

Moses and other teenagers said they find Waffle House a place of endless entertainment first, and a cheap meal second.

“We were sitting eating after a soccer game, and we see this guy running up Zebulon Road,” Moses said. “That wasn’t the crazy part, though. Following him was a police car, speeding up Zebulon, driving backwards.”

Moses continued the story. The police car followed the runner into the Waffle House parking lot. The runner dropped something near a car and kept running, only to be caught by the officers. Some Waffle House staff and customers walked outside to find out what happened and found that the runner had dropped a pair of shoes he had stolen. The shoes’ owner also was chasing him, Moses said.

Another popular story among teens is the one about the “sword lady.” At the same Zebulon Road Waffle House, one employee tells customers about her sword, which many take to be purely for show.

“She said if we played the Waffle House song she’d get her sword,” said Liam Copan-Kelly, a freshman at Macon State College. “When someone did play the song, as of course they would with a threat like that, she went to her car, brought back a sword and started screaming and waving it around.”

A less threatening version of the “sword lady” is the “spatula lady.” This worker chased some kids out of Waffle House with spatula in hand, while the kids’ father sat in the restaurant laughing, said Central junior Tarver Bechtel.

The Waffle House on Zebulon Road usually gets business from many teens, partly because of its proximity to a local movie theater.

However this Waffle House is not the only one that teens frequent.

During football season, many Central football fans followed the school’s half-naked cheerleaders — shirtless guys who cheer on the football team — to a Waffle House on Riverside Drive. But the half-naked cheerleaders could not take their scantily-clad spirit inside.

Waffle House continues to hold up the statute of “no shoes, no shirt, no service,” which provided some trouble for the half-naked cheerleaders, who had to put shirts on before entering the building.

Some teens admit they don’t even eat at Waffle House, and going is just a bonding experience.

“Waffle House was just the place that brought that night all together for me,” Kevin Jimmar, a senior at Mount de Sales Academy, said after a night at a local concert with friends. “I doubt if it had been any other place, those connections ever would have been made.”

Katy Newcomer is a junior at Central High School.