U.S. Egg

Can it get more American than this?

Phoenix, Arizona is the hottest city in the United States. It’s especially bad during the summer, when temperatures regularly reach 115 degrees and your sweat literally vaporizes into thin air before it can even drip down your neck. They say the desert is cool at night, but not Phoenix. Because the 500 square miles of pavement and concrete absorb heat so effectively that this pizza oven of a town barely cools down at all when the sun sets.

It’s a city better suited to lizards than human beings, who really have no business living in this part of the Sonoran desert. I am no lizard, and I told my boss as much. Nevertheless, Phoenix is where I found myself in late September, on a mission to capture interviews for a new true crime podcast I’m hosting for Novel.

The show is about a serial arsonist who in the early 2000s terrorized the community with a string of fires targeting mansions in a fancy section of North Phoenix. I only had two weeks to get the story, so with no time to lose, I hopped in my rental - a sporty red Mini Cooper - and took off.

First stop: the diner.

Any reporter worth his salt knows that when arriving in a new city for the first time, there’s no better place to get a feel for the people and culture than the local diner.

A quick google search led me to U.S. Egg in Scottsdale. I arrived early, around 9am, and was greeted by the most patriotic diner art I have ever beheld.

Your eyes do not deceive, that is an American flag made of egg cartons with eggs for the stars. How precious.

There’s something nice about being at the diner early in the morning on a weekday. It’s a good place to witness the quiet calm of “normal,” polite society (by which I mean old people). Sitting in a diner at 9am on a Thursday, one briefly forgets the stress of the day. Climate anxiety, genocide, the existential dread of an upcoming election… it all melts away like American cheese on a hash brown. And for a brief moment in time, it’s just you, your coffee, a glossy menu, and a smiling waitress making you feel like all is right with the world.

If there’s one quality that diners evoke more than any other, it’s nostalgia. With the breakneck pace of change these days, diners are one of the few old timey institutions we have left. Perhaps that’s why it feels so special to squeeze into that booth and behold the comforting familiarity of Heinz ketchup, artificial jam and sugar packets in a little square dish.

Perusing the expansive menu, I order the “Hawkeye” omelette ($16.49), which comes with chicken, bacon, tomato, avocado, and jack cheese, with hash browns and an English muffin on the side. Normally, this would be way too crazy an option for 9am. But when I asked the waitress what was her favorite thing to order, she told me it was the “Hawkeye.” The choice was made.

One of my favorite things about diners is they pretty much all look and feel the same, no matter where you are in the U.S. What do Jersey and Jacksonville and Juneau all have in common? The menu of their diners will be suspiciously similar. That’s pretty interesting when you think about it. The vast majority of diners are independently owned, yet there’s a comforting consistency to the food and vibe that is typically reserved for fast food chains. But unlike McDonald’s or Taco Bell, diners have soul.

It can be found in the way the guy in front of me holds the door on the way in, or in the big smile of the host as he leads me to my table, or how the waitress asks with a wink if I want my hash browns extra crispy.

“That sounds lovely, thank you for asking,” I warmly reply.

The Hawkeye soon arrives, and it’s quite a sight to behold.

Obscene amounts of bacon, melted cheese gooping all over the place… just the way I like it. It’s a meal fit for a king, and that’s how I feel in this moment. Sitting back in the booth, sipping black coffee from a heavy stoneware mug, gazing out the window and watching the sun glint off my hot red Mini Cooper, knowing it’s all being paid for by the company card… as my grandpa would say, “You’ve got life by the balls, Sammy.”

Yes, indeed.

Then, something happens that shatters the illusion. A couple booths away, a man loudly shouts, “Hey everybody! Did you hear Mexico has a new president? She’s a woman!”

I laugh. It’s a pretty hilarious thing to loudly shout in a public place. But the waitstaff is pissed. A tall and muscular man walks swiftly over and grabs the man by his arm, dragging him out of the booth. The shouter is revealed: his clothing is disheveled. His hair is long and tangled. Under his arm is a jumbled pile of newspapers. He looks small and fragile, almost childlike in comparison to the strong man who grabbed him. Judging by appearances alone, and the aggression with which he is being handled, I deduce that this poor individual likely belongs to the city’s sprawling homeless population.

The muscular man drags the shouter out of the restaurant by his arm, pushing him out the door with more force than is necessary. An awkward silence hangs in the air. People are staring. The waitresses are speaking to each other in hushed tones.

And just like that, the peaceful facade of our American fantasy is shattered. At nine in the morning over eggs and bacon, my fellow diners and I are forced to confront the reality that is poverty in America, and the brutality with which those who uphold the status quo enforce social norms on those who break it, such as by tossing out those who would disrupt the peace of “normal society.”

Putting the last few bites of hash brown in my mouth, I feel badly for the man who was tossed. He doesn’t get to finish his hash browns. I wonder if the waitress asked him with a smile if he wanted them extra crispy. I wonder if he had any money to pay for them at all, or if he was just there in the booth to catch a break from the heat that even at this early hour was increasing minute by minute to temperatures that are deadly for those who live outside.

Feeling emotional, I gaze up and observe a large painted map of the U.S.

The Statue of Liberty dominates the East Coast. A film camera invokes the allure of Hollywood near Los Angeles. A caricature of a Mexican man strums a guitar along the Rio Grande. And there, encircled in the lasso of a handsome cowboy, is U.S. Egg. In that moment, it’s never been more clear to me that I am a son of empire, slurping a cup of fresh squeezed O.J., my slick rental car waiting to scoot me off to an air conditioned Air BnB where I will be sheltered from the hot Phoenix sun that this very moment is bearing down on thousands of unfortunate souls who have nowhere to shelter, no hash browns to eat, no winks to receive from friendly waitresses.

Being confronted with this duality at nine in the morning over eggs and bacon is truly what it means to be American.

Despite all this, within just a couple of minutes, the facade returns. People go back to their conversations. The men at the host stand engage in arm slapping over a situation well handled. The check is dropped at my table, along with a styrofoam cup filled with coffee for the road, free of charge.

And with that, I’m off to discover who burned down all those mansions in Phoenix 20 years ago. I wonder if it has something to do with the housing crisis… Only one way to find out. Stay tuned for Fire on the Mountain, coming April 2024.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As far as diners go, U.S. Egg is as good as they come. But the nostalgia invoked by this institution that I love so dearly is on shaky ground. What does it mean to idolize the past when the present is rife with inequality? I don’t pretend to know the answer. If anything, I am just a little extra grateful for the blessings in my life that allow me to travel to Phoenix to make podcasts and enjoy simple pleasures like eating at the diner. Let’s not take it for granted.

EAST COAST: 8.5

WEST COAST: 8 (It would normally be a 9, but I’m deducting one point for how they handled the shouting man. In California, they would have been gentler.)