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Diner at Georgia and Wayne
| Article
# : |
19097 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1991 |
1,479 Words |
| Author
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Peter Holden
Peter Holden is the assistant advertising manager at The World
& I and a free-lance writer. |
Except for the wear and tear and higher prices, the diner in Silver Spring, Maryland--the Tastee Diner--looks like something from any 1950s American roadside.
In this case, the roadside is at the corner of Georgia and Wayne avenues, across the street from empty lots that are being primed for development. The diner's exterior is painted a dusty rose and trimmed in maroon. The atmosphere inside is informal and friendly; red-cushioned swivel stools line the counter, and wooden booths along the walls are divided by coat racks. Two or three waitresses move smoothly from customer to customer, taking orders, chatting, or refilling half empty cups with coffee that by itself is good enough to keep the regular customers coming back for more.
The regulars at the diner are about as regular as customers get. Like twenty years and more regular--the same time of day, same stool, same order. The waitresses know most by name, and the rest they know by what they order. "You get to know what people like," says Eunice Ramsey. "One man I only know by what he orders. He's been coming here for over twenty years."
Ramsey has been refilling coffee cups at the diner since 1955, the year she graduated from Churchville High, a private school in Churchville, Virginia. Her father had hoped she would go on to college after graduating from high school and was disappointed ("My father cried when I started work here," she explains) when she decided to strike out on her own and found herself working at the diner.
Ramsey is one of a small core of workers who have stayed on at the diner for the long term. Asked why she has remained so loyal so long, her explanation is disarmingly simple: "When I started, I liked it, and I've been here ever since. It's like family." Asked the same question, Dee Sinclair, herself a veteran of thirty-five years, is equally direct: "It's our life. We've watched each others' kids grow up. If ever there was anyone in trouble, they'd always be helped."
This diner, truly a--and here the phrase fits--home away from home for worker and patron alike, is a vintage 1946 model and was hauled by rail that year to Silver Spring from Newark, New Jersey. It was transported in two sections--the stainless steel eating area and the kitchen--which was to be bolted back on after making it to Silver Spring.
Back in 1946, Silver Spring was a small working-class
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