BREAKFAST AT THE DINER — #15

Four customers were in the diner, when I walked in to make it five The Fixture was absent again, but Phil was telling a joke to Q-Man, who laughed before the punchline. Bald-Walker was seated at the same table where he’d nearly toppled a few weeks ago. I nodded at him, and he nodded back. OK, I was thinking, that’s enough human interaction for me today.

Just the Hash Browns must have arrived mere moments before me, and was still in the process of sitting down at the counter. He’s an old guy, so sitting down takes a while. Kirstin the waitress asked, “Just the hash browns?”

“Just the hash browns, honey,” he said. Calling her ‘honey’ is allowed, I think, because she calls most of the regulars ‘honey’.

I sat at a stool and Kirstin was instantly there, pouring coffee and setting me up with cream and napkins and salt and pepper. “The special today is kielbasa and eggs,” she said, so the diner has daily specials again — hope that means business is picking up? But I didn’t say that. I don’t say much.

I’d had the diner’s kielbasa before and it’s marvelous, so that’s what I ordered, and Kirstin thoughtfully offered to have Harvey prep it as an omelet. I’m an omelet guy, and she knows it.

Then she was talking about her children and grandchildren, and I like Kirstin just fine, but being the quiet guy I was glad she was talking to someone else.

♦ ♦ ♦

A middle-aged white man entered the diner, sat at the counter, ordered coffee, and asked Kirstin, “Do you have the homemade corned beef hash today?”

“We have it homemade as a special sometimes, but today it’s from a can.”

“From a can,” he said, mulling it over. “Is it any good?”

“It’s edible,” Kirstin answered with a smiley shrug, “but it’s better when Harvey makes it from scratch.”

The man ordered scrambled eggs and sausage instead, and then the diner went a rare couple of minutes with no conversation in the air. I read my New Yorker and sipped my coffee, and pondered the profundity of corned beef hash in a can.

♦ ♦ ♦

There was a guy at the diner a few weeks ago who’d never heard of eggs over-hard, and sometimes I’m similarly clueless. It’s amazing the things you can go through life without knowing, and for me, “corned beef hash” was one of those things. My family never ate it, so it was only a nonsensical phrase I’d heard in old movies, until I came to this very diner for breakfast a bunch of years back.

Years-younger Kirstin told years-younger me that morning, “The special today is homemade corned beef hash.” And did I ask what corned beef hash is? Nope. Remember, I don’t talk much. But I ordered it, ate it, loved it, and then afterwards I asked Kirstin what the hell I’d just eaten.

She explained it to me, and now I’ll explain it to you: First off, there’s no corn, so ‘corned beef’ is a lie. It’s ordinary beef, soaked in a mixture of water and salt and some spices. ‘Corning’, for no logical reason, is the word for soaking beef this way, which lets salty deliciousness seep deep into every mouthful.

This ‘corned beef’ is then cooked slowly and finally ‘hashed’ with a knife, which means it’s chopped into bite-sized bits. Mix it with potatoes and onions, and it’s corned beef hash. Mix it exactly right, like they do at the diner, and the homemade hash is perfection. Same as kielbasa, when that’s the special, it’s what I order.

Corned but canned beef hash sounds like an abomination, though. Never tried it, and never will.

Except that an hour later at home, typing this paragraph, I’ve decided to risk adding a can of corned beef hash to next week’s shopping list.

♦ ♦ ♦

At around 6:30 AM, Bouffant-Walker came in, reliably. You could post a schedule. He said good morning to me as he passed my stool, but he says good morning to all the regulars. I said good morning back, same as always.

Then he sat at the end of the counter and started his occasional babbling, saying something out loud every two or four minutes. His intent, I think, is to engage some random soul in a conversation — throw out a sentence and see if anyone responds.

“The buses have been free since March because of the coronavirus,” Bouffant-Walker told the diner, “but now riders have to pay. Bus system is hurting for funds,” he added, “but who isn’t?”

There was no response. I don’t talk much, and everyone else in the diner was wither talking already, or had their mouths full.

♦ ♦ ♦

“Is everything OK here?” Kirstin asked, while pouring more coffee for me. It’s a standard waitress question, and usually I just smile and not, but today I spoke,

“I’m a cranky old bastard,” I said, “so I’d let you know if anything was wrong, but it’s all perfect. Always is.”

“Why, thank you,” she said, by then pouring coffee for someone else.

♦ ♦ ♦

Health Report came in, picked a stool, ordered coffee, and started talking about his recent visit to urgent-care, because “it was all swollen.” Nobody asked what was swollen.

♦ ♦ ♦

Some old white guy I’d never noticed before was sitting at the counter, saying something to Kirstin, but I didn’t hear what he said. Sure heard what she said, though:

“Hey, we don’t brook that. Not At All. You want to eat here, you watch your mouth.”

Those were the harshest words I’ve ever heard from Kirstin. Harvey and Slim were both in the back, neither seen nor heard, but they were listening, no doubt. They could be up front in seconds.

The man mumbled an apology, quietly resumed eating his meal, and everyone who didn’t hear wondered what he’d said, but nobody asked.

It’s a working-class diner, and vulgar conversations aren’t uncommon, with no reprimands from staff. I’ve heard dirty jokes, vivid descriptions of death and menstrual disasters, and I once overheard two old men discussing their hemorrhoids over breakfast — and nobody was told to shut up like Kirstin had told that old man.

A while later, he finished eating, paid, apologized again, and I wondered whether he’d tipped, and then he was gone.

“OK,” said Bald-Walker as the door clicked closed, “what did that guy say?”

“N-word,” Kirstin said. “I’ll listen to a lot, but I won’t listen to that.”

Einstein supposedly said, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” Nah, I’m not going to blather that racism is stupid — if you don’t know that by now, no rant from me would rescue you.

It’s extra stupid, though, to say something like that inside Bob’s Diner. It’s Ellis Island there — a colorful place in a mixed neighborhood, that gets more mixed just a few blocks south.

♦ ♦ ♦

The diner has dozens of those little paper napkin dispensers that any restaurant has — or had. Used to be one at every place setting, nearly unlimited napkins. With the pandemic, though, those napkin dispensers are hidden behind the counter, same as the ketchup and mustard, salt and pepper, cream and sugar, and menus. Gotta be mindful of the cross-customer contamination, right?

Well, I ain’t complaining. I understand and appreciate the precautions. Thing is, I can’t make it through an entire breakfast with just the one paper napkin that Kirstin dealt when she set my place. A man needs multiple napkins over the course of a meal, especially if he’s a sloppy man like me, and double-especially when the meal is kielbasa — spicy meat makes my nose run.

Early in the meal I’d asked Kirstin for more napkins, and she’d promptly plopped four in front of me, from a stack beside the coffee pot on her side of the counter. That’s plenty, but the kielbasa was tangy and peppery and my nostrils were wet. I’d used my original napkin and all four follow-up napkins, and still, drip, drip, drip like Mr Coffee.

Kirstin was embroiled in conversation with Phil, on the other side of the counter. I don’t like to interrupt, but I was dripping on my plate, wiping my nose on my sleeve because my napkins were all snot-soaked, and I was eyeing her stack of napkins behind the counter.

Why not? It’s silly. I don’t know why I’d hesitated. Jerry went behind the counter a few weeks back, with his azalea, and nobody said anything. There are unspoken rules, and it took too long to find my courage, but after dripping and thinking and dripping and thinking, I bravely but quietly stood up, tiptoed behind the counter, took four more of their dinky little paper napkins, and headed back toward my seat.

Then Bouffant said, “Oh, shit.” He’d dropped his pepper shaker onto the floor, right in my path, so I bent over, picked it up, and put it gently next to his plate. He said thanks, and I heroically settled onto my stool again, thinking what a mensch I’d been for returning his pepper.

What an adventure! 99% of the drama was in my head, thinking I’d get in trouble like I’m a little kid again, but instead I actually got thanked!

♦ ♦ ♦

Three men came in, separately, over about a minute. None looked familiar to me, but Kirstin greeted them each by name. “Good morning, Carlos,” then “Howdy, Henry,” and finally, “What’s up, Stan?”

What are the mathematical probabilities? Here’s a diner with only forty seats, where I’ve had breakfast once weekly for more than fifteen years, but bam, bam, bam, here are three apparently regular customers I’d never seen before. And Kirstin knew all of them by name.

♦ ♦ ♦

My last cup of coffee went empty just as I finished this week’s New Yorker, so I slipped a twenty under the bill, mostly under my plate so’s it wouldn’t blow away with a gust of wind from someone opening the door. The tab was $14-something, so the rest was my tip.

“Thanks, Kirstin,” I said, and stashed my soggy napkins in my pocket. She has to take my order and handle my plates and demeanor, but she doesn’t have to handle my snot.

 9/5/2020
Republished 4/27/2025

Breakfast at the Diner
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