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Friday, August 06, 2021

Night falls on an IHOP in Georgia

Pancakes for dinner
Dalton, GA
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

The scene: a parking lot just outside an IHOP restaurant near the I-75 in Dalton, Georgia. It’s 8:59 p.m., December 21, 2019.

We’ve been in the car since long before the sun came up. Over 1,200 km, one province and five states later, we’re back in darkness and very much in need of a break.

It isn’t much, this place, an everyday eatery among countless others. But it sits like a beacon in the darkness, a welcoming reminder of home for those who find themselves impossibly far from it.

It’ll do, despite the fact that the supposed International House of Pancakes is neither international, nor is it a house. I clearly have a lot of time while driving to toss around silliness like this.

Naming convention aside, I feel strangely compelled to take a picture from the outside looking in.

Maybe I don’t want to forget this place - seemingly forgettable to so many, but oh so indelible to us. Maybe I need to remind myself that as we race from there to here and then onward to there, we owe it to ourselves to hold onto the tiny-yet-significant stories that play out along the way, in the little towns that soon fade out of the rearview.

Soon enough, the Dalton IHOP indeed fades out behind us as we accelerate back up to speed, back into the inky night.

We were only here for a blink, but somehow it sticks with us no matter how far away we now find ourselves.

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Caption This 34, September 2007

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