No Accounting for Taste

Steve was craving a fried pork sandwich as we drove through the backwoods of eastern Iowa one summer. We settled into a corner booth in a mom and pop café in a sleepy town that couldn't have stretched half a mile.  The meal I ordered would be coming with a bread roll, so I asked for some olive oil to dip it into.  The matronly waitress gave me an odd look and said she’d see what she could do. Later she shuffled back carrying two plates and a cereal bowl.  Steve was well pleased with his fried pork sandwich.  She set my plate down with some unremembered food and a plain, pasty white dinner roll.
Looking at me skeptically she said, “We don’t got olive oil, just the corn oil,” and set down the cereal bowl sloshing to the brim with the clear, slippery substance.  
As soon as she was out of earshot we cracked up laughing.  It was a win-win humor fest because the kitchen staff was probably laughing at me.  Can’t you hear the waitress?  “Hey  Clem!  Some lady wants to dip her dinner roll in OIL.” 

“MOTOR OIL??!!”  

“No, you idiot, this stuff!” she says as she starts pouring the Wesson.  “I never heard of such a thing, how much you think I give her?”

Clem replies, “Well fill ‘er up--she might want to dip it all the way in.  No accounting for some folks.  Must be Minnesotans.”
©6/2011  Jana B Patrick