For Mother’s Day I ate chicken fried steak and cherry pie al a mode at the Beeline Café in Payson, Arizona.

My family has been stopping at the Beeline forever. Whenever we made the drive from Winslow to Phoenix, the Beeline was our preferred place to stop for lunch.

The Beeline is an old cowboy diner. There’s one particularly mean waitress who sasses everyone and lots of old-timers and weak coffee and I absolutely love it.

I always ordered the chicken fried steak, as did my dad, my mom and my grandma. All four with salad, all four salads with ranch dressing. My little brother, inexplicably, always ordered the French Dip sandwich.

One time we overheard two women in the booth behind us. One of them said to the other, “Have you ever felt of a dead person”? “Cold as clay, heat leaves the body as soon as they’re gone”.

We almost lost it in our booth, having to look away from each other to keep from laughing.