Diner Culture

I step from my car and I see ahead the shiny glint of smooth, polished chrome, the place is shaped like an oversized rail car, but never on the tracks has it roamed. I walk on into the small entryway, where fliers of all sorts are tacked up, guitar lessons, baby-sitting, and a sheet for a man selling newborn boxer pups. Inside are booths spaced along the wall, and a long counter with spinning stools, I take a seat at the later of them, the formica counter strangely cool. I pick up a large, six-page menu, laminated and bound in plastic rings, breakfast alone takes up two pages, they do a little bit of everything. But I am looking for something specific, to make sure this place is up to the regs, because we all know you’re not a real diner, unless your menu boasts of steak and eggs. Wait, there it is, and they use t-bone too! I order some from the waitress Charlene, she calls me ‘hon’ every other word, and says the cook does a great over-easy. Reclining a bit, I take in the whole place, starting with gray-haired veterans in the back, boasting of ships, or wars that they fought, with the proud images on their caps. Nearby a boy, maybe just turned six, builds a fort with packets of jam, a tired-looking mother just rolls her eyes, makes no move to stop her little man. Some college kids, all freshly hungover, have taken up residence to my left, last night must’ve been one epic blow-out, judging by the silence and lack of pep. Just beyond them a young couple is having breakfast with the wife’s grandpa, he recounts the first time he ever came here, on the arm of the wife’s late grandma. But there’s the waitress, carrying my steak, two eggs and home fries, brown and steaming, hate to cut this short, but the stomach demands that I end all this poetic scribbling…