Interstate Driving
Reverend Al Sharpton said it all on MSNBC this morning: “They’re worried about the logo, when there’s nothing healthy on the menu”. Yesterday I wrote about the month of August, “silly season” in the media world. There’s not much silly in our current news, but here’s one. It’s about a restaurant chain called “Cracker Barrel”.
Cracker Barrel found a niche in American life. They were originally an Interstate stop, a restaurant that you’d pull off on a long trip, and depend on the menu and food quality. And it worked. Their menu is based on what would have been served on Walton’s Mountain. (Remember the long-running TV show, the Walton’s, with John-Boy and Jim-Bob and the rest of the clan?) Cracker Barrel décor is straight out of post-Depression America: washboards and long timber saws, old metal signs advertising tooth powder and Brylcreem, RC Cola and Goody’s Headache powder.
One proviso: if you’re the driver, you need to be careful at Cracker Barrel. The food is heavy on carbs; biscuits and gravy, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, country-fried steak and beans. You might went to hold back a little bit, or find yourself yawning fifteen miles down the road.
Local Breakfast
And for locals who go to Cracker Barrel, well, I used to say that Jenn and I lowered the average age whenever we went. Maybe, at sixty-eight about to be sixty-nine, I don’t do much lowering anymore, but Jenn still does!!! It’s the Bob Evans crowd, and like that more local chain, both serve a mean breakfast, all day long. At Bob Evans it’s called the “Homestead”, two eggs, bacon, ham, or sausage, biscuits and gravy, hash browns. It takes two plates. The similar meal at Cracker Barrel is called the “Old Timer’s”. I’ve got both memorized. If breakfast is your favorite meal, it’s the bomb.
The final Cracker Barrel touch is the “old country store” in the lobby, and the rocking chairs on the front porch. That all works too. You can often find the elderly watching the world go by in the rockers as their biscuits settle. And if you are looking for brand new versions of old LP records – why it’s at the Cracker Barrel. And not just Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, I found Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced”, a brand new press, as well.
The Sign
So what’s the news? Well, Cracker Barrel’s original logo was the words “Cracker Barrel” in what looked like a pumpkin outline, beside a barrel. And sitting by the barrel was an old guy in a straight-backed chair. It was like if you came down from Walton’s Mountain to town for supplies. The problem is the logo’s complicated: from afar, coming down the interstate with only seconds to decide whether to exit or not, you could read the words but the rest of the sign was too hard to decipher.
Last week, Cracker Barrel “corporate” decided to simplify things. They announced they were going with just the words, and cutting out the old guy, the chair, and the barrel. And MAGA world went nuts.
Why would corporate mess with what a pretty good thing? It’s simple: I made a “Walton’s” reference at the beginning of this essay. “The Walton’s” went off the air in 1981. That’s forty-four years ago. While the show went into syndication and reruns, you have to be in your fifties to even, maybe, have a memory of the original. There’s a reason why I probably equal the average age in the restaurant. Management was looking to appeal to a younger generation.
But, MAGA-world saw the removal of the old guy and the barrel as, somehow, “WOKE”. And WOKE, along with the “secret” initials “DEI”, are the worst possible insults. Say that the hash browns are soggy, demand that the country-fried steak be more than hamburger, inquire what really is in the sawmill gravy: but don’t call Cracker Barrel “WOKE”. Even if the MAGA-world doesn’t really know what “Goody’s Headache Powder” or “RC Cola” was, they demanded the corporate Cracker Barrel rescind the changes.
Dying Off
And they did. The wrath of MAGA-world is more than their restaurant chain can bear. So the old guy is back, in the chair, beside the cracker barrel; telling a visual story far too complicated to understand. And the corporate problem remains: how to compete with the “cooler” restaurants down the road, from BW’s (wings) to Scramblers (breakfast). The appeal of Cracker Barrel may still be strong, but their demographic is doing the absolute worst thing for their business – they’re dying.
And, as far as Reverend Al and MSNBC are concerned, they are getting their own “make-over” soon. Comcast, decided to break off their cable business from their broadcast business. So NBC remains with Comcast, but MSNBC (and CNBC) will now be in a company called Versant. For the news side, the “NBC” has to go. Soon, MSNBC will become MSNOW. Even the MS (which was an original cooperation between Microsoft and NBC) will be rebranded as “My Source” – for “news, opinion, and the world”.
But MSNBC is WOKE anyway. So other than a few of us “old” NBC-news fans, who remember Chet and David, John, Tom, Brian and Lester; no one else will care.
