Mully's

     College is greatly expanding me. Unfortunately, it's more than just my mind.  Today we went to Mully's before we had to be in court.....I'll explain that one later.  There is something about being in the South that makes you crave fried food and fat. Anything cooked in deep grease or swimming in butter.  Mully's can take care of that for you.  We had never been to Mully's but heard some students talking about it in class. Yes, we were eavesdropping because they were talking about macaroni and cheese, and our ears couldn't help but listen.  So we went Mully-hunting today, and after a few missed turns, found it out by the AutoZone in a little strip mall. (Do three stores count as a mall?)
     It was buffet day. Lucky us. $6.50 will get you fried chicken, baked chicken, BBQ chicken, country fried steak with rice and gravy, spaghetti and meatballs (can't quite figure that one out? Southern Italian?) boiled okra, fried okra, okra and tomatoes, corn, butterbeans, greenbeans, slaw, sweet potatoes, and then you get to the salad bar.  Seemed a little ironic to throw in a salad bar at that point, but there it was, right beside the dessert bar. 
     We weren't quite sure how Mully's worked, so Sissey and I ambled in, tried to look like locals, and took a seat.  The waitresses immediately figured us out for newbies, but they were so friendly and helpful we didn't mind confessing that we were Mully-virgins.  "Gotta have the buffet," they advised. So buffet it was.  After loading up, I mean sampling  a dainty morsel of a few of the dishes, we began to evaluate Mully's. We gave it an A+.
     We must have looked perplexed when discovering our plates were empty, but Delores came to the rescue. She was eating alone at the table next to ours, and leaned over and said, "Go on back, as much as you like!" We like.
     Delores goes to Mully's once a week. On Thursday seniors eat for $3.00, so sometimes she goes more than once.  She's a grandmama of twins, born three months early, just like mine were.  Her grandbaby girls weighed less than 2 pounds combined, but the toddlers are both doing great now, praise the Lord.  Delores drives to Rock Hill to keep them once a week, but she is having a little trouble now that they are running around...gives her rhematism a little rattle. Nothing a little fried chicken can't cure.
     We decided to pass on seconds from the hot bar, but had to have just a little nibble of something sweet.  Who's going to pass on double fudge chocolate cake with double chocolate icing and a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie? We knew it would be a long afternoon in court, so we loaded up on a sugar high to get us through the day. Besides, Delores said we couldn't skip the dessert bar, and we didn't want to be rude. 
     We waddled out of Mully's, moaning and groaning about our culinary sins. Feeling full and guilty, we headed to court, hoping the judge wouldn't convict us of gluttony and sentence us to hard labor on the fat farm.
     "Goodbye, Delores,"  we hollered as we pulled out of the parking lot. She gave us a wink and a smile, and seemed to know that it wasn't the last time our paths would cross.