The Clock has been here for over forty years. Longer than most marriages. Longer, certainly, than…read morethe one my parents had, which lasted closer to thirty years and ended, according to my father, because of a disagreement about a sectional sofa. As I pull into the parking lot, I think about how a place that has lasted this long makes everything else in town look a little "new."
Inside, regulars shake hands across the dining room like it's Sunday after church. I can't keep a houseplant alive for six months, and these people have been coming back to this same place, to order the same food, for years. Chili cheeseburger after chili cheeseburger, building something between community and cardiology. Maybe that's loyalty. Maybe I'm just projecting.
I look at the burger for a second before I eat it, the patty, the chili, the cheese, maybe onions, stacked up like it's been doing this exact thing since before I was born. It is genuinely, embarrassingly good, in the way things are good when they haven't been overthought.
And it was delicious in spite of health value. If you're eating at The Clock for health value, I direct you to the salads with prejudice.
The menu runs from salads, to tacos, to hot dogs to a meat and three (or for those in Greer, a meat and four), which is not a range you encounter often in a single establishment. It is the culinary equivalent of a man who says he can fix anything. You are skeptical, and then you watch him fix the thing, and you don't know whether to be impressed or slightly ashamed of your own limitations.
Ask anyone around town and they'll tell you about roller skating car hops, late night gatherings after high school games, real ice cream milkshakes. Those stories aren't really about the food. They're about who they were when they ate it.
I order the sweet tea. It arrives cold and correct. I'm certain my dentist has a handshake agreement with Jimmy that both will keep each other in business a long time.
I will come back here, but not as often as I should. We all have our faults. The Clock has few.
