But appearances ain't everything. Rick is an unrepentant curmudgeon who will greet you with a jovial salute of "Y'all do drugs?" (usually followed by an offer suggesting you ought to start), hit on any and all female members of your parties (never mind if they're young enough to be his granddaughter) or perhaps launch into the anti-Bush Administration rant du jour. Rick's politics aren't the only controversial thing in the place: All the meat is organic and pesticide-free from the pulled pork ("Dude, I don't want to know about you pulling your pork," I told Rick) to the hemp-fed beef, which the local government employees won't try for fear that it'll make them piss positive on Big Brother's drug tests (it won't). Also, the bourbon pie was the subject of a lawsuit by a certain company who didn't think there should be two desserts named after a certain horse race.

Then there's the Cajun sauce.

Now, I like spicy food. I mean, I've been known to consume entire jars of scotch bonnet hot sauce in one sitting. Dave's Insanity Sauce or Endorphin Rush, which are basically pure capsicum in a bottle (Scoville rating: 51,000), and which will cause you to feel like you've been Maced if you rub your eyes three days after getting some on your finger, have, thus far, been the only thing I can't eat straight out of the bottle. So, when I asked Rick to load that stuff into my Cajun omelet (this was brunch), I thought I'd be showing the locals something. To his credit, he didn't even raise an eyebrow as he spooned more of the Sauce of Death onto my plate. Little did I ken how badly it would kick my ass, and the rest of my gastrointestinal system, as well.

All I can say is: I survived. Unfortunately, the residents of Bagdad, Kentucky, whose gas station bathroom I bombed when we stopped for gas a half-hour later, didn't.

Besides his discovering an alternative energy source, Rick's diner points to the future in other ways, too. As Aaran Naparstek points out in this New York Press article, the modern American lifestyle is dependent on unlimited cheap oil. Petroleum makes fertilizer which grows corn and other crops, which are force-fed to cattle in feedlots, then shipped by truck across the country and processed into Taco Bell and Wonder Bread, then shipped back again across the country into huge megastores where they're available for our cheap consumption. The thing is, as the price at the pump and the body count of our soldiers in Iraq shows, gas ain't cheap no more. The days of huge agribusiness are numbered; before long, we're all going to have to start turning the suburbs back into farms and eating locally-grown pulled pork, like Rick's.

Standing not only against the system, but against all commonly accepted culinary practice, Rick Paul goes to show that you find corporate motherfuckers everywhere—and as long as we have people like him subverting the hearts and bowels of the heartland, there's still hope for this country.