The Streets of Bakersfield, Part 3

I know, I know! How can I get this much mileage out of a 16 hour trip to Bakersfield? Hell, I still haven't even had time to write about my Memorial Weekend trip to the Bay Area, which was quite possibly the best vacation I've ever had in my whole life. I digress... One last foray into the California hipster farmland.

Before we left town, we went to a diner which was recommended to us by the guy at the gas station. My friend asked where we should get breakfast. The conversation went something like this:

"Hey, do you know a good place for breakfast around here?"
"Uh, yea."
(Pause.)
"Do you know what it's called?"
"What?"
"The breakfast place."
"Zingo's."
(Pause.)
"Uhhh, where is it?"
"What?"
"Zingo's."
"Oh, about a mile and a half north."
"Thanks."

Turns out Zingo's was approximately 3 blocks north. Maybe that's a mile if you're trippin' on gas fumes, but it was an okay enough place. Very much a truck stop, filled with big grizzly men in baseball hats talking to each other (none of them were sitting together, they just yelled from table to table) about truck parts and keeping their cabs clean and stuff. There was a really old lady who wandered around asking if anyone there had won the lottery, and occasionally a waitress would tell her, "Well, if I won it, I sure wouldn't be here, would I?" The place was decorated in James Dean posters and paintings, most of which lit up. Elvis came in a close second on the wall art. (And yes, he lit up too.)

We ordered breakfast from a hundred year old ostrich with a smoker's hack. My friends went to call his family and the food arrived, and she joked to me "Well, your friend isn't allowed to complain if it gets cold! Hahahahaha!" I was all, "You betcha!" She made an impatient gesture at my friend and scolded him ever so slightly when he returned to the table.

We hustled out past the Harleys and semis. Goodbye Bakersfield... I'll be back for thrift store shopping and dinner some other time.