52.23... Diners
The first one of my childhood was a sleek silver beauty near the center of Stratford, Connecticut named The Duchess Diner. It was clean and stylish, and the food was great, but what had me begging my father and grandparents for more and more visits was the fabulous assortment of characters who were habitues. I adored the colorful mix of loquacious old men in fedoras, priests from our church around the corner (I about fainted the first time I saw one of the nuns there in her long black habit), actors from the American Shakespeare Theatre- a few blocks away- sitting over endless cups of coffee learning lines, blue haired ladies in giggling gaggles, mechanics from the garage across the street in for a quick bite, teenagers out on what looked like first dates, sullen middle-aged men reading the New York Post who smiled only when the waitress came over with the coffee pot and called them hon, hotshot wheeler dealers workin' the crowd, and ordinary families like mine.
Sometimes we'd go there for breakfast in the afternoon on a Sunday after the last Mass (my grandmother couldn't get out of bed until late morning and then needed an hour to "put on her face"), but it was iffy because the wait list was formidable and the number of children involved impressive. Truth be told, though, I much preferred the odd times when I went with either my dad or my grandfather alone, so I was the center of their attention. There were also the memorable rare weekday occasions- generally after a back-to-school clothes shopping trip- when I'd go with my grandmother and mother and ditzy Aunt Fran. Those three women were all champion talkers, so my sister Linda and my younger cousin Brenda and I would have ample opportunity for soaking in all the current juicy gossip during those leisurely afternoon "foot-resters".
That diner, and a few others, helped mark a number of significant rites of passage. I opened my presents after my first holy communion at a table at The Duchess, and that's where we celebrated my elementary school graduation. The boy I had a mad crush on in 6th grade took me there for a shared piece of pie the week before I moved away. Thirty years later when someone in our family was arrested and sent to jail for a few years, the family gathered with him at The Duchess for his last breakfast before he "went in".
Your first neighborhood diner is kinda like the first guy you kiss. There will be others that are better, but nothing will ever replace the first one. Still, when we moved north, Newington didn't have a real diner downtown, but it had several nearby on the old Berlin Turnpike. Being on a still-busy, though no longer essential highway (route 91 had made it redundant for anything but local needs), it attracted its own peculiar but colorful clientele, with a high percentage of old-timer truck drivers who preferred it to the mega-truckstops on the bigger road. A tad less "family friendly" than The Duchess, there were still opportunities for rites-of-passage. I remember having tea and an english muffin at one of them after my boyfriend's junior prom. And the day I got my driver's license, after lessons from my father that we were lucky we both survived, dad handed me the keys and then directed me- as he had during lessons- to "turn left here, take a right at that light....". Next thing I knew I was heading up the ON ramp for the highway that had never been a part of my lessons. It was an exhilarating 20 minute white-knuckle experience before we pulled into the parking lot of the diner where he'd planned our little private celebration. I don't think a BLT and iced tea ever tasted so good.
It would be hard to think about diners without acknowledging how essential "the diner waitress" is to the whole experience. In my only slightly romanticized experience I think of them as smart, sassy, capable, and caring.... sort of the American working class everywoman. The chrome and deco lines, along with the swivel counter seats and booths, may be what define the diner and makes it recognizable, but it's the waitresses (and cooks, of course) who keep the regulars coming back. Like bartenders, they're part caretaker, part psychiatrist, part cheerleader, and part police officer. I'm sure it's no coincidence that teenage workers end up at fast food joints instead of waiting the booths in diners... it takes a lot of honed skills to fill those soft-soled, arch-supporting shoes. No doubt it was my admiration for those strong-and-motherly waitresses of my youth that led me to willingly "wait tables" in a sit-down place when I was 16, and much of what keeps me coming back to them all these years later.
Whenever I'm traveling, I'll tend to get off the highway and look for the local equivalent of the diner. As a young design student I was a little snobby about them needing to look like the silver cars of my youth, but as I've grown older, I've come to understand that "diner" is more a spirit than a design. A five-seater attached to a garage in Ohio, and that small adobe place we stopped at just before we hit Albuquerque where the cook's grand-daughter served us, have all the transporting and essential elements. I still love the "classic" diners that I'm lucky to be surrounded by in New England (like the Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown where I had breakfast on Sunday), but any of the "dineraunts" that keep popping up, truck stops, or "mom & pops" will do. As long as there's a menu of classics, quirky customers, coffee in one of those round pyrex pots, and a sassy waitress... I'll be happy.
I once had an amiable argument with a friend when I expressed my extreme distress at the proliferation of fast food emporiums across the country. "But Karen", he soothed, "don't you understand that this is the commonality that makes us American? Our regions are so diverse that we need to have something that we can recognize as US wherever we go. It's our homogenizing factor". Hmmmm... places with greasy, unhealthy food and a bevy of high-turnover, low-paid jobs. Perhaps it's time to replace them with diners. Now that's a national identity I could get behind!
52.23... Diners
The first one of my childhood was a sleek silver beauty near the center of Stratford, Connecticut named The Duchess Diner. It was clean and stylish, and the food was great, but what had me begging my father and grandparents for more and more visits was the fabulous assortment of characters who were habitues. I adored the colorful mix of loquacious old men in fedoras, priests from our church around the corner (I about fainted the first time I saw one of the nuns there in her long black habit), actors from the American Shakespeare Theatre- a few blocks away- sitting over endless cups of coffee learning lines, blue haired ladies in giggling gaggles, mechanics from the garage across the street in for a quick bite, teenagers out on what looked like first dates, sullen middle-aged men reading the New York Post who smiled only when the waitress came over with the coffee pot and called them hon, hotshot wheeler dealers workin' the crowd, and ordinary families like mine.
Sometimes we'd go there for breakfast in the afternoon on a Sunday after the last Mass (my grandmother couldn't get out of bed until late morning and then needed an hour to "put on her face"), but it was iffy because the wait list was formidable and the number of children involved impressive. Truth be told, though, I much preferred the odd times when I went with either my dad or my grandfather alone, so I was the center of their attention. There were also the memorable rare weekday occasions- generally after a back-to-school clothes shopping trip- when I'd go with my grandmother and mother and ditzy Aunt Fran. Those three women were all champion talkers, so my sister Linda and my younger cousin Brenda and I would have ample opportunity for soaking in all the current juicy gossip during those leisurely afternoon "foot-resters".
That diner, and a few others, helped mark a number of significant rites of passage. I opened my presents after my first holy communion at a table at The Duchess, and that's where we celebrated my elementary school graduation. The boy I had a mad crush on in 6th grade took me there for a shared piece of pie the week before I moved away. Thirty years later when someone in our family was arrested and sent to jail for a few years, the family gathered with him at The Duchess for his last breakfast before he "went in".
Your first neighborhood diner is kinda like the first guy you kiss. There will be others that are better, but nothing will ever replace the first one. Still, when we moved north, Newington didn't have a real diner downtown, but it had several nearby on the old Berlin Turnpike. Being on a still-busy, though no longer essential highway (route 91 had made it redundant for anything but local needs), it attracted its own peculiar but colorful clientele, with a high percentage of old-timer truck drivers who preferred it to the mega-truckstops on the bigger road. A tad less "family friendly" than The Duchess, there were still opportunities for rites-of-passage. I remember having tea and an english muffin at one of them after my boyfriend's junior prom. And the day I got my driver's license, after lessons from my father that we were lucky we both survived, dad handed me the keys and then directed me- as he had during lessons- to "turn left here, take a right at that light....". Next thing I knew I was heading up the ON ramp for the highway that had never been a part of my lessons. It was an exhilarating 20 minute white-knuckle experience before we pulled into the parking lot of the diner where he'd planned our little private celebration. I don't think a BLT and iced tea ever tasted so good.
It would be hard to think about diners without acknowledging how essential "the diner waitress" is to the whole experience. In my only slightly romanticized experience I think of them as smart, sassy, capable, and caring.... sort of the American working class everywoman. The chrome and deco lines, along with the swivel counter seats and booths, may be what define the diner and makes it recognizable, but it's the waitresses (and cooks, of course) who keep the regulars coming back. Like bartenders, they're part caretaker, part psychiatrist, part cheerleader, and part police officer. I'm sure it's no coincidence that teenage workers end up at fast food joints instead of waiting the booths in diners... it takes a lot of honed skills to fill those soft-soled, arch-supporting shoes. No doubt it was my admiration for those strong-and-motherly waitresses of my youth that led me to willingly "wait tables" in a sit-down place when I was 16, and much of what keeps me coming back to them all these years later.
Whenever I'm traveling, I'll tend to get off the highway and look for the local equivalent of the diner. As a young design student I was a little snobby about them needing to look like the silver cars of my youth, but as I've grown older, I've come to understand that "diner" is more a spirit than a design. A five-seater attached to a garage in Ohio, and that small adobe place we stopped at just before we hit Albuquerque where the cook's grand-daughter served us, have all the transporting and essential elements. I still love the "classic" diners that I'm lucky to be surrounded by in New England (like the Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown where I had breakfast on Sunday), but any of the "dineraunts" that keep popping up, truck stops, or "mom & pops" will do. As long as there's a menu of classics, quirky customers, coffee in one of those round pyrex pots, and a sassy waitress... I'll be happy.
I once had an amiable argument with a friend when I expressed my extreme distress at the proliferation of fast food emporiums across the country. "But Karen", he soothed, "don't you understand that this is the commonality that makes us American? Our regions are so diverse that we need to have something that we can recognize as US wherever we go. It's our homogenizing factor". Hmmmm... places with greasy, unhealthy food and a bevy of high-turnover, low-paid jobs. Perhaps it's time to replace them with diners. Now that's a national identity I could get behind!