ohmidog!

Since I decided nearly three months ago to get on the road again — that I was going mobile — I’ve reached a few conclusions: Life is a highway. Every day is a winding road. And, though I may not be a highway star, or king of the road, I have been runnin’ down a dream, and I think, just maybe, I can see paradise by the dashboard light.

Or is that a Waffle House?

We’ve discussed songs and the road before, and how they intertwine. Now NPR has come up with a road mix of its own — in celebration of Interstate 95 and the beginning of a $1.4 billion construction project that will fill in it’s missing link.

The nation’s most traveled Interstate, I-95 stretches nearly 2,000 miles from the top of Maine to the southern tip of Florida — but there’s a hole in it. It disappears for a few miles near the border of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, forcing travelers to divert onto other roads.

Now, the missing 12 miles is finally going to be built, prompting NPR’s Weekend Edition‘s to produce ”I-95: The Road Most Traveled,” a series exploring the social, cultural, economic and environmental impact of the I-95 highway renovation project.

As part of that, Philadelphia’s WXPN — as part of putting together its 885 Ultimate Road Trip Songs Countdown – has put together a mix of 95 classic road songs in honor of the Interstate. The mix is available via the NPR Music iPhone app (just select “Streams” at the top of the “Rock/Pop/Folk” channel).

A few days from now, Ace and I — lacking both iPhone and app, but with our own collection of road music — will be hitting I-95, northbound, to head back for a visit to Baltimore, where we hope to rest up and contemplate the next leg of our journey, and the pros and cons of continuing it.

The cons include being weary of motel rooms, and short on funds. The pros include the people we’ve met and the places we’ve seen, and that, even if we do sometimes wake up not being sure what town we’re in, we get to spend virtually all of our time together.

Which is good, because, as you might know, we’ve got a thing that’s called radar love.

Being on the road with a dog, there aren’t that many opportunities for a sit down meal, or at least a leisurely sit down inside a restaurant meal — meaning I, in my travels below the Mason-Dixon Line, have been missing out on that southern culinary and cultural delight: The Waffle House.

The Waffle House is one of my favorite places on earth. I love to sit on a stool at the counter and watch the short order cook in action. I love the way the waitresses shout out the orders. I love to watch the waffle iron overflow, see the eggs sizzle on the grill, and eavesdrop on conversations about the days events, spoken in southern accents thick as maple syrup.

On this trip with Ace, in the middle of the summer, the chances to savor a Waffle House experience have been non-existent. It has been way to hot to leave a dog in a car for any length of time.

But the other morning, the coolest one in a long time, I pulled into a Waffle House — they are, after all, at nearly every exit down south, still more prevalent than Starbucks. I found a parking space in partial shade, popped the back window open, and let Ace watch me (and I him) as I sat at a stool and downed a waffle and some orange juice.

I needed my Waffle House fix. It only took 15 minutes. Don’t hate me.

It’s not just the food, which comes fast, costs little and tastes good; it’s the Waffle House ambience. It’s knowing, soon as you walk in, four or five employees are going to shout out a hello. Your waitress is going to call you hon’, or perhaps darlin’. And chances are there will be a good conversation going on at the counter. Something about sitting at a counter, even if there’s not a bartender on the other side, sparks open discussion, group conversations. Counters — and they’ve been declining since the demise of the drug store soda shop — have a way of making us realize, as we sit elbow to elbow, that we’re all in this together.

So I always choose the counter.

At this particular Waffle House in Virginia, the conversation was about daytime TV talk show host Wendy Williams. It began when someone said “How you doin’?” Then everybody started saying “How you doin’?” Apparently it is Wendy Williams signature phrase, though some thought she stole it from Joey on “Friends.” Others thought Wendy Williams looked a lot like a man, which of course led to giggles and more debate.

(I didn’t say that discussions were of vital importance, just that they occur.)

(Tip to young reporters: Waffle Houses are a great place to get, in addition to waffles, quotes — better than bars because people are generally sober, unless you’re there late at night; better, too, than the “man on the street,” because the man on the street is generally headed somewhere and doesn’t have time for you. It’s easy to walk in, take a seat — at the counter of course — and get a conversation started on the subject you’re reporting on. I long ago opened a story on a proposal in South Carolina to castrate convicted rapists with a Waffle House exchange.)

The Waffle House got its start in the mid-1950′s when neighbors Joe Rogers, who worked for the Toddle House, and Tom Forkner, in the real estate business, decided to start a business of their own. On Labor Day 1955, they opened the first Waffle House in Avondale Estates, an Atlanta suburb. The chain grew to 401 restaurants by the end of the 1970′s, 672 by the end of the 1980′s, 1,228 by the end of the 1990′s. By 2006, Waffle House Inc., operated more than 1,500 restaurants in 25 states.

At the Waffle House you can get your grits. You can get your hash brown potatoes “Scattered, Smothered and Covered.” You can get “Cheese n’ Egg”s or “Egg and Cheese,” which are two different things, I learned a few years back.

Seeking scrambled eggs with cheese, I placed my order: “I’ll have the cheese and eggs,”

“The Cheese n’ Eggs, or the Egg and Cheese?” the waitress asked. As I was silently pondering what the difference might be — trying to figure out just what I was missing – she explained that the Egg and Cheese is a sandwich.

Waffle Houses –  they’re all always open and they all have individual jukeboxes in the booths, but not so loud as to drown out the conversation — are not exclusive to the south, but, like kudzu, that’s where they’ve spread the most.

If you’ve never experienced one, you should. Sit at the counter. Join the conversation. Have a waffle, and maybe some eggs and cheese. Or was that cheese and eggs?

A neglected Yorkshire terrier, named Twinkle, gave birth to a litter — all stillborn – not long after she was dropped off at the Forsyth County Animal Shelter in North Carolina.

Shortly after that, the Animal Adoption and Rescue Foundation (AARF), also in Winston-Salem, got a call about a golden retriever who had been killed by a car, leaving eight puppies behind — all less than a week old.

A volunteer at AARF had taken in Twinkle as her foster dog, and, before you know it, Twinkle was performing motherly duties, after all — for two of the deceased golden retriever’s puppies, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

Twinkle, as she was dubbed by the shelter, was given two of the puppies – named Brandi and Kahlua. She was too small to nurse any more than that.

AARF officials says she accepted the pups as her own.

“She’s happy, the babies are receiving the love of a surrogate mother, and all is well,” Janice Freeman, the chairwoman of AARF’s board, told the Journal.

The other puppies, now about 4½ weeks old, are being bottle-fed. They all will be available for adoption in four weeks.

(Photo: Lauren Carroll / Winston-Salem Journal)