ATLANTA – I hadn’t driven far beyond the city before I came across what seemed to me to be the future, in the form of a Waffle House beside the Interstate highway. These restaurants are ubiquitous across the South; in method, if not in menu, they are equal and opposite to McDonald’s. At McDonald’s, nearly all the workers are in the back, tending the machines. At Waffle House, everybody is out front: ten or twelve staffers standing around behind a counter, everybody from the manager to a pair of griddle cooks whose backs were turned to me. The little restaurant…