Not All Chickens Go to Heaven
reviewed by Quintus Lutius Cincinattus Tait
In Lowndesboro, I have discovered the secret to chicken salvation. If chickens are bad, they go to a fast food fried chicken restaurant, but if they spend their six weeks living a good, wholesome life, they can only wish to spend an eternity chopped to pieces, breaded, fried, and basking in the glow of the heat lamps at the Fast ‘n’ Easy Gas & Guzzle Chicken Counter. There they lounge, clad in new crispy, golden skins, alongside tater logs, corn dogs, fish sticks, and okra, dripping grease onto fluffy clouds of white paper towels. Meanwhile, eager customers squint through the grease-spattered Pearly Gates, waiting to draw them back to the realm of earthly delights.
While some of the food offerings reference the divine, the story behind the Fast ‘n’ Easy Gas & Guzzle chicken counter belongs far more in the earthly realm. Last year, residents of Lowndesboro drew a collective gasp of devastation when the rumor that Chuckles Fried Chicken had dropped the Fast ‘n’ Easy Gas & Guzzle from their franchise list circulated far and wide. Even more shocking was the fried chicken beak incident. Owner Wayne Pyles steadfastly refused to answer questions about it, a strategy that allowed him to quickly reopen his hot food counter without a noticeable fall-off in patronage. Pyles stoicism is a food lovers gain, since shedding the burdensome yoke of the Chuckles Fried Chicken Franchise Fryer Standards Handbook has allowed the women behind Pyles’ counter, longtime co-workers Miss Dottie and Miss Odella, to expand into the unchartered reaches of the deep fryer pool.
To truly take advantage of all the F ‘n’ E, as it has been dubbed by locals in the know, it’s necessary to sample their entire rotating daily menu. Miss Dottie and Miss Odella show up at 4:30 in the morning to start working hand-rolling biscuits. Alone, the biscuits are serviceably fluffy and buttery, and the biscuit combinations are hit or miss. The pieces of fried bologna are a salty revelation, especially when adorned with grape jelly squeezed fresh from a plastic pouch. Less successful are the biscuits filled with small split hot dogs regular customers refer to as “red hots”, which taste exactly as expected, like unidentifiable fatty pork parts blended with salt and nitrates and crammed into a casing. The sausage gravy is delicious at 5 AM, serviceable by 6:00, but by 7:00 after two hours of warming over a can of sterno, it is gummy, flavorless mess.
After 10 AM, the lunch menu makes it way out of the fryer, and the pieces of chicken ascended from the deep fryer basket towards the divine. Not everything at the counter is a hit. The onion rings are clearly purchased pre-made, as are the taquitos. The corn dogs are merely a reworking of the unappealing breakfast red hots, this time shrouded in greasy cornbread, which does not make for an improvement. The fried okra was excessively slimy, even for okra, and somehow still wrapped in a dried out cornmeal skin.
But the chicken, oh, the chicken. On three separate occasions, I sampled drumsticks, breasts, and a liver and gizzards sampler. For the most part, the skins were crispy and flavorful, and the meat fell apart in my mouth. On the right day, this is the Black Belt ambrosia, the food of the rural gods. The exception to this is the fried chicken livers, which are metallic and chewy, making them best left as catfish bait. When accompanied with a perfectly spiced tater log, a new religion was born. All the rest of you can get your visions of heaven at Sunday services, but I’ll take mine at the Fast ‘n’ Easy.
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Intersection of US 80 and AL Highway 97, Lowndesboro
ATMOSPHERE: A convenience store
SOUND LEVEL: Background radio varies by cashier shift from Party Blues to right-wing talk; cash register and video poker noise sometimes gets loud
RECOMMENDED DISHES: Gizzards, breasts, drumsticks, tater logs
WINE LIST: A series of fortified wines and chilled white zinfandels are available for purchase in the refrigerator case in the back. The one to the left…no, your other left.
PRICE RANGE: $.59 to $3.95
HOURS: 5 AM – 2PM, but arrive at the beginning of shifts when food has spent minimal time under the heat lamps
RESERVATIONS: Not accepted. Anyone hoping for a seat will be disappointed. On all visits to the restaurant at practically all hours of the day all booths were taken up by the same crowd of tobacco chewing old men in overalls and trucker hats
CREDIT CARDS: All forms of payment accepted (with the exception of checks written by Dwight Barker, Cindy Price, and Mickey Taylor).
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Accessible
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