George W. Bush, the president of the United States, came to Kansas City last week to give a speech. One morning, he left the posh environs of the Plaza to have breakfast in the humble (though white, to be sure) town of Riverside. Not just in Riverside, but at the Corner Cafe, home of chicken-fried steak, French-fried gizzards, and biscuits & gravy.

You remember how Samuel Johnson said that in Scotland oats feed the people? Well, in Kansas and Missouri, biscuits & gravy feed the people, at least for breakfast. Biscuits & gravy consists of biscuits, which to those of you across the pond, are like scones but not as sweet. The biscuits are broken open and drowned in pale, creamy gravy. There are pieces of pork sausage in the gravy. I have no idea how it's made, but I'm pretty sure it involves a number 10 can of something.

So the president and all his followers motorcaded to the Corner, and he asked the waitress what was good. She replied, "Well sir, it would be a shame to come here and not have the biscuits." It seems the biscuits & gravy are so elemental that most people don't even bother with the "& gravy" part. Plus, she was probably a little flustered, so she just said "biscuits."

How do I know all this? Talk radio.

Apparently they all got busy translating the menu into Texan and placing orders, and the president duly ordered a biscuit. And that's exactly what he got. He stared at the small, dry, pale biscuit on his plate and said, "It's kinda small."

And the waitress said, "This isn't Texas."

(Why does that crack us up? There are 1,000,000 people in the Kansas City area, and by now everybody but the bishop knows that the waitress replied, "This isn't Texas.")

In time the Department of Agriculture interceded, or perhaps it was the governor, a notorious Republican. The president eventually got his biscuits & gravy. I don't know if he liked it, but I do know one thing. He didn't leave the table hungry.