NORTH CARROLLTON - It's Friday night at Dixie's, and Fat Daddy's grill is sizzling.
A woman enters the tiny cafe, located on the town's main drag, George Street, announcing that she's gotten two traffic tickets. She doesn't sound upset, though. Turns out the scraps of white paper she's holding were from a little girl, set up beside Mike "Fat Daddy" Carpenter's grill just outside the door.
Dixie - Carpenter's wife and the boss around the 25-foot-by-25-foot cafe - bustles around from the kitchen and rings up the price of a meal for the county's chancery clerk, Sugar Mullins.
"You can write," Mullins said, "that all the men around Carroll County, when it comes their turn to cook, they come to Dixie's."
Dixie's Kozy Kitchen cooks up a cozy atmosphere, along with the whole-tater home fries, burgers, steaks, and plate lunches. There are lots of takeouts, and then there is the catering. Of course, it's mixed in with a kind of easy bantering.
A tall, skinny, tanned dude comes in and orders a Philly.
It's a mixed crowd, black and white, which finds its way to Dixie's, so she is cautious about endorsing political causes, despite her colorful first name.
"I don't want to offend anyone," she said, "but there's a Mississippi flag flying in my yard at home."
A mug decorated with the Confederate Stars and Bars on a field of familiar red and with Carpenter's first name on it, sits next to the toothpick holder. It's a gift someone brought her from Arkansas, she said.
"It is a thought, though, when is somebody going to ask me to change MY name, which is really 'Dixie' Grace," Carpenter grinned.
The Philly eater, who's fixing up an old family place east of the Kozy Kitchen, unabashedly takes a stand.
"My great-great-grandfather fought for that flag," Larry Tate said, eyes flashing. "I'm not ashamed of what he did. It doesn't make a rat's tail what boat we came over on; we're in the same boat now."
Carpenter, a military brat who had roots in neighboring Montgomery County, grew up "all over," but she loved visits with her maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. E. W. Braswell, there. A black and white photo on a wall shows inside a store near Oak Grove, La., which her other grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. John Arnold Easom, owned.
Carpenter said that country store first put her with the public.
"My grandma and grandpa would put Coke cases in front of the cash register so I could reach it," she said. "I'd work, and at the end of the day they paid me with a Baby Ruth bar and a Coke. It was in the days hoe hands would come in, and I'd slice bologna and cheese for them. I was 7."
Old-timers recall that the tiny cafe used to house the late Howard Shelton's barber shop. Nowadays, there's a different action and cut going on from behind a partition separating the tiny dining room and the tinier kitchen, which manages a microwave, an apartment range, a deep-fryer, and a grill.
"We pack 'em close," Dixie says of the amazing number of burgers she and her helpers turn out.
A regular Dixie's cheeseburger has mayonnaise, mustard, lettuce, tomato and onion slices, dill pickles, burger sandwiched between two slices of American cheese, all between the right halves of a 5-inch bun.
The traffic at Dixie's rumbles pretty steadily during strategic times of the day and week. Inside, there are three small tables, one larger, backed by a small bench. One diner offered, "I have seen four people sitting on that bench." It's an amazing thought.
"After an archery shoot, some man reserved the place," Dixie said, "there were 28 people here. In good weather, we have set up some card tables outside."
The Carpenters have had the cafe about nine years, taking over from the previous owner, Phyllis Stokes, who is Dixie's ex-daughter-in-law. As popular as the cafe is, the Carpenters say they haven't seriously considered moving to a larger place.
"Might lose something in the transition," Dixie said.
Next month marks the Carpenters' 21st wedding anniversary. "Fat Daddy," a nickname the towering, dark-haired Mike got from schoolmates, works for the state forestry commission now, but he's thinking of grilling full-time after he retires in a few years.
"I just like cooking," Carpenter said. "I learned trial and error. Dixie and I got started selling meals at the Buck Fork Hunting Club south of here, but we don't do that anymore. I've got a lot of satisfied customers. I do the best barbecue in town."
He looks back over his shoulder, heading through the doors back to the sidewalk in front of the Kozy Kitchen with a fresh batch of sauce.
"I'm the only one that does it."
