The Diner Story OR What I Learned From Charles Dickens 1
(Charles wrote whole novels in serial form like this. You ought to be
glad I only have one five page story. Here’s the beginning of my favorite of my
writing. Hope you like it too.)
The
Diner
A short
story in three parts
by Leslee Clapp
All things being equal, a diner is a diner. Chick’s is like Eddie’s, is
like The Glider, is like The Gourmet, is like The Summit, and is like The
Wellsboro, or The County Seat, or The Tick Tock. No wait. Not the Tick Tock.
Those New Jersey establishments put on airs. They sell you expensive food and
even have tablecloths sometimes. If a diner doesn’t smell a little like
cigarette smoke and old grease and hamburger and fresh bread, there’s no reason
to stop and eat there.
Young’s in Mehoopany can smell a little like dairy cows now and then. The
good old boys come in from the farm and get a coffee, some pancakes, and home
fries, before they go on about their business in town. And they don’t change
from their barn boots, either.
If a diner makes you dress up, if you walk in the door and don’t see guys
with baseball caps that advertise everything from Best Value Plumbing to the
Yankees, if you don’t hear loud local accents and the waitress doesn’t call you
Honey or Sweetheart, then you’re not in a diner.
If blue or gray haired old ladies
in plush pantsuits don’t sit as matriarchs with grown children and grand
children crowded into the corner booth or the long table in the dining room,
then you are in the wrong place.
And at The Blue Plate, not all the blue haired ladies are customers.
There is Phyllis, for example. She has
been working here since 1956. She was younger then, we all were in our youth,
and she zipped from table to table. She could load four plates on each arm. She
could pour coffee quicker than anybody in Mountain Crossing and she never
spilled a drop.
She was lighter than air, dancing from counter to kitchen to table and
back again. Her laugh made the old
chrome gleam and she knew every song on the jukebox if you called out the
letter and number.
Dad, the greatest storyteller that ever was, reported all this to as the
gospel truth. After ‘Nam, I took over
the county’s newspaper and kept one office across the street in the Chronicle
building. But all the real newsgathering was done from booth five at Good
Eats.
Phyllis got married, the only weekend she had off in years, to a James
Dean-type who road a big black Harley. She would be serving a customer coffee,
pie, and banter and suddenly look up. Her regular face wore a look that was
somewhat nice but tough. A look that told everyone she would joke but nobody
could get fresh or push her around. That regular face of hers would suddenly
get soft and dreamy.
The regulars all knew that she had heard that motorcycle. She even
blushed when her James Dean thundered into the wide paved parking lot. She even
giggled when he came in the door and gave her flowers in front of everybody and
stole a kiss.
And soon happy Phyllis seemed to be carrying a basketball under her
waitress uniform. Soon she had a custom
made, The Blue Plate pink maternity
smock, instead of the pink shirt the rest of them wore, and then she missed a
whole week, a whole fortnight a whole month of work.
The coffee wasn’t as good. The pie was stale. The sugar jars were never
full and there were ketchup fingerprints on a window or two. It seemed that the
whole place was flat, like soda pop left open too long. Then one day . . . ( Come
back on Tuesday and read more about Good Eats)
