All you need to know is shit goes down there

Waffle House

Chief Burns tries to school the quizzical look on his face as he reads the text from his brother again.

I've finally discovered it,

the most dangerous

place on the planet.

Should I be worried?

He settles on responding after a couple of Seconds. He shuts the phone off and places it on the table. Chief Burns tunes back into the world around him and tries to catch up on the multiple conversations taking place between his children and the rescue bots as they set up for their family camping trip. His phone buzzes before he can gain enough context to understand anything being said, drawing his attention back to it. He clicks it on and is surprised by what he finds.

Woodrow Willson

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It usually takes Woodrow a good while to respond to text since he tends to hang around areas with little to no reception. Once, a Merry Christmas text from Woodrow hadn't gotten through until a day before New Year's Eve. Charlie fully opens the phone to see if the photo holds any clues to his brother's quick response or his previous message. Charlie stares at the picture for a second before letting out a quiet chuckle.

"What's funny?" Kade asks, looking up from the tent he was helping Cody set up.

"Read the last text," Charlie tells his eldest son as he hands him his phone. Cody cranes his neck to see the screen over his brother's shoulder when he, too, lets out a chortle.

"He's not wrong. One of the dudes in my class at fire training's from down south and almost got shot at one."

"I'm sorry, what?" Dani asks, looking up from the wood pile she had been turning into a fire.

"I, too, would like more context pertaining to that situation," Chase says. By this point, everyone has dropped what they are doing and is looking at Kade intently.

"Unkle Woodrow texted Dad saying he found the most dangerous place on earth and then sent him a picture of him standing in front of a Waffle House."

"What does a Waffle House have to do with your friend almost getting shot?" Heatwave asks.

"First of all, he wasn't my friend; we were rivals. Second, it's a Waffle House!" Kade says.

"You can't just say its name again and expect me to understand what you mean," Heatwave responds.

"He almost got shot there because it's a Waffle House. What else do you want me to say?"

"Gun violence can take place in any setting. What makes the fact that happened in a House of Waffles significant?" Chase says. "Is that a regular occurrence at these places? If so, I think the best course of action would be to remove the Waffle make in the kitchen at the fire station."

"Waffle House is a chain Restaurant down south," Graham says. It is known primarily because lots of fights break out there."

"Why?" Bolder asks.

"It's open all hours of the day, every day of the year, has low prices, and is often situated in low-income areas where crime tends to be..."

"No one cares about the technical reasons. All you need to know is shit goes down there," Kade says, interrupting Graham.

"Kade Language," Charlie says, gesturing to Cody.

"Sorry," Kade mumbles.

"I'd still like to hear the story of how your friend almost got shot," Heatwave says, smirking at Kade's reaction to the word friend.

"He was at a Waffle House." Kade begins.

"Obviously," Dani mumbles under her breath.

"I think he said it was in Mississippi, but I could be wrong. There are like two thousand Waffle houses, and it could have happened at any of them." Kade continues ignoring his sister. " He saw a rapper he liked and went up to talk to him, and the dude pulled a gun on him. Must have thought he was getting jumped or something. They figured it out in the end, and no one else realized what happened, but it's still a funny story."

"If Waffle Houses are known to incite violence, why are they allowed to spread?" Boulder asks.

"I have to Agree. If one ever tries to open on Griffin Rock, we must find a way to halt the process." Chase says.

"Waffle House isn't really a Maine restaurant, so I don't think We'll need to worry about that," Graham says. "And anyway, Waffle House doesn't incite violence. It just tends to be the setting where it takes place, for the reasons I tried to explain earlier before I was inte..."

"They also need them for the Waffle House Index." Kade buts in.

"The what?" Cody asks, confused.

"It's a way to tell how heavily a hurricane impacted an area based on the hours the local Waffle house is open," Dani replies.

"This restaurant can predict storms?" Blades asks hopefully, "Maybe we should get one."

"It doesn't predict the storms. It just reacts to them." Chief Burns says.

"Then what makes it different from any other restaurant in that regard?" Boulder asks.

"The director of FEMA created the Waffle House Index. "The corporation behind Waffle House works really hard to keep their franchises open even after natural disasters, so sometimes it's the only restaurant open after a minor hurricane," Graham says.

"How can a Hurican be minor? It's a Hurricane!" Blades says, horrified.

"They get one almost every year down south, so the people there have kind of just gotten used to it." Chief Burns says.

"Lots of southerners joke that they don't evacuate for a hurricane unless the Waffle House closes," Kade says.

"What do they do if they don't evacuate?" Blades asks, horrified.

"Mostly just stay in their house until it passes," Graham says.

"Unless they're from Florida." Dani Jokes. "They take their shotguns and shoot the hurricane."

"That's Florida-Man for you," Kade responds. The burns all laugh, but the bots seem confused.

"What's so special about men from the State of Florida?" Chase asks.

"Ok, so..."