I like diners.  Sure you can take me to a 5-star restaurant and I even won’t complain about the long wait for service, the long wait for my meal and the long wait for the check.  If the food and company are good I’ll still enjoy myself, however.  For ambience give me a local diner.  I would postulate local and independently owned diners are the ancestors of modern fast food restaurants.  Seriously, there are certainly variations in taste and menus but there are just so few methods for grilling beef and frying potatoes.  One diner may not look like another diner but the staples from the kitchen are pretty much the same.  I’ll even grant a regional nod or two but most people still come for the staples.  These would be caffeine, eggs and community conversation.  The last of these is why I most like diners.
 Two weeks ago I had my Sunday lunch at the Milford Diner.  Business was brisk.  The attached dining room filled with the after church crowd and in a booth across from the counter were the folks like me.  The ones looking for a quick and inexpensive meal but perhaps hoping for a much longer conversation.  I’ve been to a handful of diners in Delaware and find the best are the real town halls.  The meeting places, if you will, for the general public.  I’ve been going to diners since my earliest days in the arms of a parent.  My folks could’ve received their mail at their favorite diners as they spent so much of their time in these places.  For my mom it was a one known as The Kopper Keg.  It’s still on Main Street back home and for the expatriated it’s a must stop on any return visit.  It’s where you see old friends and catch up on everything missed. 
Perhaps my favorite stop is a diner located in a small hollowed out city in upstate New York.  Hunter’s is located in Auburn, in the Finger Lakes, and was opened shortly after World War Two by a man named Bob Hunter.  Mr. Hunter was Joe Baden’s first father-in-law, or that was what I was told when I went to work at the local radio station 21 years ago.  The diner was two blocks from broadcast headquarters.  After wrapping up local election coverage way back in 1987 I took the staff there for a little celebration.  We sat in corner seats and drank milk shakes made on an old mixer and poured from tall stainless steel glasses.  Hunter’s Dinerant has changed hands a few times but little inside is different.  It sets on concrete stilts over the Owasco River and entry is through a front door accessible by bridge.  The building is stainless steel and the seats are covered in pink vinyl and the outside edging is trimmed by lime green, yellow and orange lights.  When city busses cross the bridge over the river the diner vibrates.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner are accompanied by these miniature earthquakes. 
There are differences, I’m told, between diners and coffee shops.  Diners are noisy with the sounds of silverware against plates and you can hear the chatter from the kitchen.  A coffee shop serves much the same food but I think is a little too quiet and antiseptic for my tastes. 
The best diners exhale atmosphere.  One dilapidated place in one of my old lives was located on a dusty old pre-Interstate highway but served grilled Italian toast with breakfast.  I couldn’t get enough of the place even though an old girlfriend thought the building should’ve been condemned.  Yet it was packed from doors opening at 5:00 A.M. until closing at 2:00 P.M. 
Another favorite resembled an aging Quonset hut but made banana pancakes the size of hubcaps from a ‘68 Olds 98.  And the staff served something called frittata.  If you could manage to eat this in one setting the owner would take your picture and post it on a wall.  There must have been some world class eaters because all of the walls are plastered with photographs. 
It’s the good life inside a diner.  The best are filled with friends and good cheer and I’ve even wondered if there is a preview of heaven.  A warm place on a cold day in winter where you can warm your fingers over a fresh cup of coffee and be greeted by a smiling face asking you to choose a pleasure. 
 

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