Diners!
I love diners.
Dona’s Diner in Green Valley almost qualifies. Almost, because it’s located in a shopping mall, and the cooks aren’t anywhere to be seen.
I love the old-style diners that were prevalent through the 1950s…those American institutions that offered generous portions of comfort food at bargain-basement prices.
As much as the food, I really enjoyed the people; the visible, sometimes grouchy cooks, the gum-chewing waitresses, and the diners of all sizes, shapes and descriptions, who came from all walks of life for but one purpose…
The Diner Experience.
“Coffee?”
It’s a weekday morning, around eight. The senior citizens take their places for breakfast. The morning news plays on the counter TV with the volume turned down, quiet enough for me to enjoy my newspaper and coffee. Just then a roar, followed by a wave of helpless cackling, erupts from a table in the dining room. Then giggling, then quiet. Then another roar, more cackling.
I peer over the high booth wall to see where the noise is coming from: a posse of white-haired retirees at two pushed-together tables.
“The drunks couldn’t be as loud as the seniors in the morning,” says the waitress, who has arrived with my coffee.
The seniors, a group of three couples that commandeers the dining room each morning, call it the “therapy club.” They tell me they’ve all just retired, and that “this is how we spend our retirement.” They keep a weekly kitty just for meals at the diner.
“We come for the toast,” jokes one of them.
“On Sunday, we have eggs,” says another.
“But only one of us does.”
“And we share it.”
“This way we don’t go over budget.”
As a result of competition from fast-food franchises, few real diners remain today. If you share my love, you can read about twelve that still thrive today in Connecticut.
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Edit: The New Haven Advocate website has been down. Try again later
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:31 pm
Dona’s had (they may still have–I just have not been in there in awhile) a sort of a con going with their featured $1.98 breakfast special. It seemed like a real good deal–quite a bit of breakfast food (eggs, potatoes, bacon toast, etc) for not much money. But then you got your bill and it was always closer to $4.00 than the two you expected from the price. The reason? Coffee!! Nearly everyone considers coffee as a part of breakfast, and just assumes it is included. It isnt! Not only that, but they charged around a buck fifty a cup.
All perfectly legal, of course, just unexpected. That must have been where the profit was.
But I always thought it was a very safe place to be. When I would go in the morning, there were so many cops hanging out there, eating jelly donuts, that you have thought there had been a double-axe murder in the place earlier.
December 23rd, 2005 at 5:08 pm
When I visited my daughter in Maryland I when to several dinners around Laurel race track for coffee and all the old race track people. Really fun to talk to them. But the best dinner in Iowa was always FOX’s LUNCH!!!! I spent many a early morning drinking coffee with the Perry drunks. Nothing better then a greasy cheese burger to sober up on.
Jack
December 23rd, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Ahhh, Fox’s Lunch. Next to the theater in Perry. Burgers were indeed the best.
December 24th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Another diner in Perry, called I think the White Way. Hamburgers were fried in about an inch of grease. It was across the street from M/ Wards. How about Sam and Chucks, not sure if that is classified as a diner but food was good. That was where you took your date of you could afford it.
December 24th, 2005 at 11:09 am
I never ate at the White Way, but Sam and Chucks was a favorite. Remember the bowl of spaghetti and Rib Sandwich? Always full after a football or basketball game.
December 24th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
Keith; I think your wrong about the name. There was a Deets hamburger place where you say the white way was and it was over Polly’s first barber shop in the basement. It was the home of nickle hamburgers from around 1941 to about 1949. My uncle Henry Klein came to town in his new pink Cad and always took the whole family there for Lunch! May there was a white way later and I missed it ?
Jack
December 27th, 2005 at 9:34 am
Must be a small world if all you guys ate at the same place!
December 27th, 2005 at 9:51 am
Small world? We also played football and basketball together. We even went to the same High School and were in the same class.