Biscuits & Gravy at Toomey's

Yesterday evening, after spending much of the day with a friend of hers, Lilly came home and asked if we could play Monopoly. At her friend's house, she said, she'd played "Chicago Monopoly."

"What's that?" I asked. "You have to get your alderman's approval to buy a house or hotel?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

It look me a moment to realize she meant the Chicago variety of the game, the one that features Chicago place names, rather than Atlantic City's. I might have mentioned this before, but I'm a purist in matters of Monopoly -- you have to be a purist in something -- and consider all variations bogus, mere exercises in expanding market share, except for the Waddingtons UK version, which was created not long after the US version.

I might feel differently if the variations I've seen made any socioeconomic sense. Highly expensive real estate always substitutes for Boardwalk and Park Place, but poor or scary neighborhoods never take the place of Mediterranean and Baltic avenues, for instance. No doubt Hasbro figures that would be inviting angry reactions.

Anyway, as we played, I looked through my wad of receipts from the trip and came to the conclusion that we spent $357.29 on gas over the ten days, though that only counts gas purchased away from home. Since the tank didn't come back quite as high as it was when we left, I'll add about $30 for the actual gas expense and then round it up: $390. I'd estimated a 2,000-mile trip would take $400 in gas money, so I was pretty close.

I didn't write down per gallon costs at each purchase location, and it turns out that not every receipt states the price that way, though many do. Generally speaking, though, the further south and east we went, the lower the price got. In Indianapolis, we paid $4.16; in East Tennessee, $3.90; Nashville and Frankfort, Ky., were somewhere between those.

Most of the gas stations were only fuel acquisition points, units of corporate multi-facility owners and operators with mostly familiar brands, out to sell high-margin food and other items besides gasoline. Then there was Toomey's Country Market, not far from Crosby, Tenn., which also sold gas and grocery items, but had a little restaurant in back.

On July 3, we constituted a lot of the breakfast rush. Besides us, there was a table of three -- a man, his daughter, and her son, probably -- and a man by himself. The waitress was also the cook, the only person attending to breakfast, so it took a little while to get our order. It was a good find on the whole, especially the biscuits and gravy. A backroad restaurant in the South that can't do biscuits and gravy might as well close up.