The Best Waitressing Gig I Ever Had Was Serving Burgers at Hugo’s in Fayetteville, Arkansas | Bon Appétit

"During a fairly mysterious point in my early 20s, I had run away from San Francisco to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I scored what I was told was one of the best serving gigs to be had, on the town’s old square, at a basement burger joint called Hugo’s. Four days a week I floated down the concrete stairs, past the only window, into a wide room that still smelled of the inky ribbons that had once been sold there. A cursive neon sign—Typewriters—was the only one on the wall, and this said something important about the place: No one who came there, to gorge on one of the 20-odd burgers and sandwiches available, needed to be told where they were. It was always five degrees cooler in Hugo’s—in “The Basement,” as the people who’d worked there a decade called it—and somehow the aesthetic of the place matched the relief of its temperature, the muted jewel tones of nubbly plastic cups in which I filled and refilled sweet tea, the plain paper tablecloths I replaced when a table turned over. The clientele were various: Lucinda Williams; professors from the nearby university; and the men who frequented a pool hall not far away, which only began to admit women in the ’70s and where meth, in the bathrooms, was a problem." - ByKathleen Alcott