It had been a few years since I visited a good ol’ country truck stop, but man, I have truly loved them in all the aromantic ways a man can.
Whether on a cross-country trip along the interstates or at new ones right off the highway in my own city, they have been beacons of good taste and long-hauling for a long time.
I’ve pulled into more than I can count.
Yet I'd never had the pleasure of patronizing Oklahoma City's lone, long-running Iron Skillet at the Petro Truck Stop off I-35 on 20 S. Martin Luther King—near that abandoned hotel that might be haunted but definitely hosts comedy defensive driving classes.
It was around lunchtime on the day I went, and though traffic was steady, it wasn’t like the old truck-stop days when the biggest of rigs took up the whole lot and produced a line of sweaty truckers pounding the endless coffee refills.
Cruising through the parking lot, I saw nary a lot lizard, but there were plenty of transients from the Greyhound station across the street looking for enough change to get a meal or, to be fair, a hit of meth.
Parking the car and entering through the double-doors, on my left there was a methodically convenient convenience store, with everything a real truckin’ man would want, including some books-on-tape, sassy MAGA gear, and a strange selection of electronics that put Best Buy to shame.
But to my very right, the open kitchen of the world’s diabolical truck-stop eatery, Iron Skillet, presented itself to me in all the grease-slicked glory of the old days.
The countertop was filled with burly men grumbling over their chosen dishes and the lone waitress who kept all their coffee cups full. I sat in the unoccupied collection of empty tables as the server poured me a cup of coffee and left me a menu to peruse.
As I looked to my side near the glass case where the freshly made pies were kept, I noticed the Table of the Unknown Soldier, Iron Skillet’s war memorial to the fallen servicemen, was being used by a girl charging her phone.
Giving the server my uncomplicated order, a rather rude customer next to me was pissed that his order of the fried Lent-fish special was smaller than the picture in the menu—enough for him to send it back and request a full refund.
As I looked at the menu, I kind of got the point; prices have definitely gone up everywhere over the past few years... but I didn’t expect them to go way up the way they did, especially in a place like this. For example, my steadfast truck stop meal, the Corned Beef Hash that I just ordered, had always been a low-level value for thirty years, always around $5.99.
But here, now, it was $12.99, more than double the price.
Yes, that seemed kinda high, but as the Corned Beef Hash reached my table, my pilot-flame of volatile anger was quietly snuffed out in true greasy spoon abandon. This meal had all the true trappings of the big boy breakfast that I had been waiting for: a plateful of corned beef hash, two hermitically sealed eggs, hash browns, and a couple of slices of toast.
This was a good breakfast, for the most part. The eggs, hash browns and toast were more than serviceable, just like you should expect. But the corned beef hash, that was on another level—a greasy bomb of chopped corned beef, potatoes, and onions—a taste I will never get tired of.
Really, I should have been done by that point. But as a man on his phone screamed expletives to someone on the other end, I decided on the other truck stop staple, the donut, or as it’s called here, the Raspberry Donut Cheesecake ($6.99).
It had all the things I wanted and more—a raspberry-infused cheesecake, topped with raspberry-filled crumbled donuts, powdered sugar, and so much whipped cream. As you can imagine, it was the best dessert I ever had at a truck stop.
As I was about to pay the bill, I took one last look at the menu and added a to-go surprise for my wife, an appetizer of Fried Pickle Chips ($8.99), which I knew she'd love after a busy day of do-gooding in the community.
While these days truck stop diners like Iron Skillet cost about the same as any other restaurant, 10,000 miles of open road still tastes like a million bucks, and whether it’s from New York to L.A. or just around the corner, Iron Skillet will always be a 10-4, good buddy.
Cómpralo ya!
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Follow Louis Fowler on Instagram at @louisfowler78.
