BREAKFAST AT THE DINER — #10
The waitress, Kirstin, was nowhere to be seen. One of the cooks, Harvey, was up front pouring coffee. I sighed and sat down, settling for second-best. This is a pretty good diner without Kirstin, but it’s better when she’s here.
There were four other customers: The Fixture was present, of course, because he lives on that corner stool. He was talking to a 30-something black woman with what appeared to be a blue knitting needle in her hair, and her facial expression said, I wish this guy would shut up. At a table near the window, two very scrubbed-looking young white men in suits were eating breakfast, each with a Bible beside his plate. I’d rather have a cinnamon roll.
♦ ♦ ♦
Harvey approached, nodded at me, and said, “You want coffee?”
“With cream,” I answered, and he plopped a cup in front of me, filled it, then reached toward a shelf behind and under him for the cream.
“Need a minute?”
I looked over his head, where the daily-special whiteboard rests on an upper shelf, but it was blank. Harvey saw where I’d looked without looking himself, and said, “Sorry, no special today.”
I told him what I wanted for breakfast. He jotted it down and said, “We’ll make it seem special.”
♦ ♦ ♦
ManBun was back, still or again wearing the same Grateful Dead t-shirt as last time I saw him. He said “Good morning” to me as he walked behind my stool, with his girlfriend or wife, and of course I said the same. Dunno why we said good morning, except that’s what people do. We’d never spoken to each other before, but now that’s lost forever.
He’s white and his companion was black, both of them young and pretty and pierced, counterculture. They sat at the diner’s last table, way in the back. Harvey took their order, and ManBun’s LadyFriend asked him, “Are you working alone today?”
“No, Slim’s in the kitchen, but it’s just the two of us. Business is so slow, though, I could probably work the restaurant all by myself in a pinch.”
“Well, don’t let your boss hear you say that,” she said, “or one of you will probably get fired.”
“Nah,” he said, “Bob wouldn’t fire anyone unless we flipped him the finger. But if business doesn’t pick up, he’d maybe cut us all back from four days a week to three.”
♦ ♦ ♦
My breakfast arrived, special as promised, and the Bible Bros discussed Leviticus while I ate. They threw verses at each other, weighing the importance of every word, like after so many eons these two have ascertained the Bible’s true meaning in a diner over eggs. They ware especially fervent about what’s an acceptable sacrificial animal, because Leviticus says God won’t accept injured or maimed animal sacrifices, or any animal with warts or festering sores.
Knitting Needle, the black woman who’d been listening to The Fixture, finished her breakfast, masked up and stood at the register, paying. This put her maybe five footsteps from the Bible Bros, just as they were going into detail about why God can’t accept a diseased sheep as a sacrifice.
This lady took her change and put it in her purse, then looked at the two men, and I know exactly what she was wondering. Same thought flashes through my head sometimes at the diner — should I tell some stranger what I think, or shut up and mind my own business? She chose the former.
“God created the sheep,” she said, “and God created its disease, but He won’t accept it as an offering?”
They looked at her with smiles, and started eagerly explaining, but she wasn’t having it. “No, no, no, no, no, no …” she said, rapid fire and smiling, “but you guys have a great morning,” and she was out the door.
“And can I add something?” It was The Fixture from his stool. “Nothing against God, but we’re in a restaurant and you guys are talking about animals with festering sores. Could you at least, like, switch to the New Testament while people are eating?”
They apologized amiably, and for the rest of my morning at the diner, their conversation was noticeably quieter. Thank you for your service, Knitting Needle and The Fixture.
♦ ♦ ♦
A twenty-something white guy came in alone, and Harvey hollered at him, “Q-Man! Good to see you, bud.”
The names vary, but this is not an uncommon occurrence at the diner. It’s like they sang about on Cheers, “Sometimes you want to go / Where everybody knows your name / And they’re always glad you came…”.
The bar on that show looked like a nice enough (albeit phony) place, but I’d never want to go to any bar — or diner — where everybody knows my name. I want to be anonymous. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here for an omelet.
♦ ♦ ♦
A stranger walked in, 30s, white, with a curling mustache like sideways question-marks on each side of his nose. He sat along my section of the counter, not far from everybody-knows-Q-Man, and soon those two were talking about Fools They Have Known. It was the most interesting conversation of the morning, but the dialogue was too quick for me to take more than the briefest notes.
Q-Man started by saying something about his idiot brother-in-law, who thinks the coronavirus is a hoax or a communist plot. Handlebar-Mustache replied by telling about his cousin, who thinks everything is a hoax or a commie plot, dating back to JFK’s assassination and perhaps earlier.
“You think that’s stupid?” said Q-Man, and now it was Game On, a competition to see which of these guys knows the stupidest person. Q-Man told us about a guy at his office who goes home every day at lunch, not to eat, but to shower off the accumulated radiation from looking at a computer monitor before coming back for more radiation.
“That’s pretty damn stupid,” said Handlebar, and retorted with his sister, who worships Donald Trump more and more, the more stupid things he says and does. She’s ordered hydroxychloroquine in the mail to save her from COVID-19, and now she’s aggravated that after weeks it hasn’t arrived yet.
“It’s never going to arrive,” Q-Man predicted.
“Yeah,” says Handlebar. “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Then he brought up his sister, who says Black Lives Matter is more racist than the KKK.
“Can’t top that,” said Q-Man. “Your sister wins the prize. Number One Fuckin’ Moron for Today.”
♦ ♦ ♦
In walked an old, white, bald man getting around with a walker. He moved so slow you could have read this chapter top-to-bottom before he’d pushed his walker to a table, and struggled with the difficult mechanics of sitting down.
No disrespect intended, though — quite the opposite. It’s not easy for him, but he’s here for breakfast all the time.
Me, and probably you? If we want the diner experience, we just walk in and take a seat. But for Bald-Walker it’s work. But he gets dressed and eats at the diner, and often. He’s probably been coming since before he was walking with a walker.
Harvey took his order, poured his coffee, and Bald-Walker said, “Hey, is the other guy working this morning?”
“You mean Slim?” Harvey answered, only he said Slim’s real name, which I’ve heard twenty times but always forget.
“Yeah,” said Bald-Walker. “Will you tell him I said thanks? He sorta saved my butt a few weeks ago.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Next up, a white couple in their 40s, dressed a bit nicely like they were both on their way to jobs where you need to look presentable. He wore a suit; she was in a muted but still colorful blouse.
Mrs Dressed Nicely quietly said something to her husband, and it was a brief moment of near-total silence in the diner, so I could hear clearly: “Are you sure about this place?” He cocked his head, meaning, Huh?, and she went on in a whisper, “It seems sort of … dirty.”
Dirty? Bob’s Diner doesn’t sparkle, but it’s tidy, and the kitchen looks clean, at least from the seating area. Denny’s and IHOP are corporations, with big money to replace entire counters and repaint the walls when there’s a stain. Bob’s can’t do that, so the diner doesn’t look brand new. A couple of cabinet doors behind the counter are held shut with duct tape. The tables are old and a little rickety, like me. But it ain’t dirty. I’ve never seen a roach here.
Mr Dressed Nicely wanted hot sauce, and said it to Harvey exactly like that: “Hot sauce.” No hostility, but as a command, not a request. Harvey grabbed a bottle of tabasco, passed in front of my stool on his way to deliver it, and under his breath mumbled, “Here’s your hot sauce, you son of a bitch.”
Harvey knew, like I knew, like Mr and Mrs Dressed Nicely already knew, that even if everything was sweet perfection for their breakfast, they were never coming back. So to hell with ’em.
8/1/2020
Republished 3/9/2025
I’m a grumpy old man who lives alone and has few friends — basically a hermit. Once a week I have breakfast at my favorite diner. Most weeks it’s my only in-person interaction with other humans, which is not my strong suit.
Yeah, I’m aware of the coronavirus, so I go to the diner at dawn, before it gets busy. I wash my hands before and after, cough into my elbow, spray Lysol on my food, pay at my plate, tell the waitress to keep the change, and hold my breath while leaving until I’m outside. It’s a little more dangerous than staying at home, but life would suck without breakfast at the diner, so get off my lawn.
And remember, decent people leave a generous tip.
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