I stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast.This was my first mistake.I believed the front porch was decoration.There were rocking chairs.Many rocking chairs.Old men rocked in them with the authority of judges who had already ruled.I nodded. They nodded. The case was closed.Then I entered what I thought was the restaurant.It was not the restaurant.It was a gift shop the size of a moral test.Candles. Peg games. Fake antiques. A wooden duck that made eye contact.I came for eggs. The duck knew this and did not care.Fifteen minutes later I was still in the maze, holding a jar of apple butter I did not remember picking up.A woman named June appeared like a lighthouse."Food's that way, sugar."I thanked her with the intensity of a man rescued from retail wilderness.The breakfast was excellent. Biscuits. Gravy. Eggs that understood their job.I ate like a person who had earned calories through navigation.On the way out I had to pass the gift shop again.The duck was waiting.I bought it.I will not explain myself.In the car I set the wooden duck on the passenger seat and said, out loud, "We came for eggs."The duck said nothing.It had already won.America did not trick me.America invited me onto a porch, through a gift-shop labyrinth, into gravy, and then sold me a bird on the way out.I am fine.The duck is fine.And somehow I am more excited about this country than I was before breakfast.