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Diner Blues

by Robert Braid

About eight miles north of exit 52 off the PA turnpike, over the old railroad tracks, just past Gary's Service Station you'll find Lou's. It's a diner. Truckers welcome and all baking done on premises.

Jack owns the place and sits at the counter, third stool in from the left from 6 am to midnight, 364 days a year. Sometimes he changes the cash drawer, sometimes he goes through the garbage bins to see if anyone's thrown out silverware by mistake, but most of the time he sits there arms straight leaning over his personalized coffee mug with the faded enamel inscription, "Success is loving what you do".

Dot, a waitress at Lou's, won this mug as second place in a log throwing contest at the county fair and gave it to Jack for his 40th birthday. Dot has been working at Lou's since it opened in 1957. She started waiting tables there when she was sixteen, or so she says. There is, however, no physical evidence of when she started working.

You see, Jack bought the place 25 years ago after an open bottle of Jim Beam accidentally fell in the deep fryer and burnt the place down. Henry Moore, the original owner was introducing one of the new waitresses to the linen closet when the door jammed. Her name was May and Dot still claims that she was the best tattoo artist this side of the Alleghenies. When she heard the cooks yell fire she just slipped out the back window and was never heard of since. Henry, corpulent as any diner owner, and certainly larger than Miss May, was found burnt to a crisp from the waist down stuck halfway through the window with a belt buckle dangling from his ankles.

All the firemen were already at Lou's at the time of the fire taking advantage of the free coffee for public servants policy there. They had to jump in their Chevys and go 11 miles back to the station to get the fire truck. By the time they finally got back to Lou's the blaze had turned to a campfire and the locals were rummaging for edibles and good knives. All the wax plants and most of the cakes were destroyed.

The cooks and the waitresses had all gone out in the woods to get tanked on the gallon jug of cooking sherry they managed to grab before evacuating the building. Dot was the only one to ever come back.

Mrs. Moore was not the most astute when it came to business matters. Apparently she didn't even realize that her late husband had insurance on the place. She sold Lou's to the first person who answered the ad and then ran off to Indiana with Henry's chili recipe and the local 8th grade science teacher.

Jack was 24 then, graduated from Penn State business school (Philadelphia campus) and eager to start investing. Within a year he had the place rebuilt and was picking out a sign from Werner's catalogue when Dot walked in and asked if he was planning on using the same uniforms.

"I still got mine and it almost don't smell like smoke no more."

Jack was relatively new to the area and couldn't really dispute her claim to seniority. Besides, his business sense told him that an old waitress would bring back some of the old customers. Most of the old customers, however, were afraid that if they went back to Lou's, Jack would make them give back the knives. It wasn't until Jack introduced Early Bird specials that he got a steady local clientele. Now the customers are more regular than half the waitresses.

Mable was the first waitress ever hired by Jack himself and being in fact older than Dot, she claims the title of "Lou's oldest waitress" for herself. This, as you can well imagine, has been the source of countless arguments and even a few brawls.

Once Mable, who was 8 months pregnant and in no condition to be playing practical jokes, tossed a butter pat on the floor where Dot was coming through with a stacked tray of Hot Turkey Specials. Dot skid five feet forward on her left foot but managed to get the tray on the jack before sliding under a table on the back wall. Mr. Meyerson in booth 4 took a dish of peas in the lap and a bit of cranberry sauce on the head and Jack had to pick up his check. But the only one taken to the hospital was Mable. She was laughing so hard she went into premature labor and four hours later gave birth to Walter P. Gates - who, by the way, now works at Lou's as a busboy. Within two days she was back at Lou's serving the Thursday night Pot Roast Platter.

That was 19 years ago. Mr. Meyerson still sits in booth 4 and everybody at Lou's calls Walter "Pat" on account of the butter pat that sent Dot flying and his mother into labor.

To this day Gloria, undisputedly the third oldest waitress, can't recall the incident without laughing herself into scarlet convulsions. She'll laugh like that for fifteen minutes straight, only stopping occasionally to hock up a ball of black phlegm or two. She's been smoking non-filtered Lucky Strikes since she was 14 and her voice is deeper than Jack's. Donny the cook calls her froggy, and it was a long time disputed whether he was referring to her voice or to her complexion.

Jack doesn't remember quite why he hired her. He's forever having to remind her not to pick her nails with the dinner forks in front of the customers. Sometimes he even talks about firing the whole lot of them. Of course he can't, they've been there too long. But even if he could he probably wouldn't. Someone would have to take their place, and knowing Jack, he couldn't stand to be forced to the conclusion that anybody after several years in his diner would end up having mashed potato fights and throwing each other in the dumpster. He would like to think that it wasn't those years at Lou's that had changed his waitresses, but something maybe in the local gene pool. But instead of thinking about it too much, he serves himself a piece of French apple pie and fills his coffee mug at the urn.

"Pat! Where is that boy? Come here for crying out loud!"

Walter shook with fear the first time he heard Jack shout like that. Most fourteen-year-olds are easily unnerved, but even at that age Walter usually remained cool as a spring turnip. It's just that he already knew how hard jobs are to come by. He also knew his mother would never be able to support the two of them. He had quit the baseball team and the chess club so he could work afternoons at the diner. He worked hard because he knew he couldn't afford to lose his job, what with the payments on the pick-up and all. So you can well imagine the goose pimples running down his spine when Jack bellowed.

"Pat!" Walter was sure Jack had found out about the missing grapefruits.

"Sir?"

"Sit down."

Shaking in his BVDs, Walter managed to climb onto the stool, which actually brought him closer to eye-level with Jack.

"What are your plans, son?"

"Well, after I finish with them tables I was gonna maybe go rinse out the trash bins."

"Son, I don't think you quite understand. I meant your plans for life. What are you gonna do when you become a man?"

Walter just stared wide-eyed into the formica counter, kind of like a racoon into your headlights, not able to respond. Jack, not wanting to upset the boy, tried to change the topic. Not quite knowing how to do so he decided to take a gulp of his coffee instead. The coffee, however, was way too hot and ended up on both Walter and the counter.

"Dammit to Hell!"

Walter went back into the kitchen to rinse the coffee out of his shirt. Donny was playing tic-tac-toe in the mayonaise bin with a rubber spatula by himself, and Dot was busy watching a roach she had just caught under a soda glass.

"Hey Donny. Do you know how to play chess?"

"Hell, I've been playing with chests before you was just an itch in your daddy's pants. Huck, huck, huck!"

"Never mind."

"Pat, your momma tells me you want to start taking piano lessons. Why don't you come round to see me once in a while and I'll teach you a few tunes on my washboard," volunteered Dot.

"Huck, yeah, and I bet she can show you a thing or two on her chess board, too. Huck, huck."

Donny's the cook. He's also a recovering narcotics abuser and a bit of a pervert. People are often surprised to find out that he once hosted a children's program on public television. He's got a pot belly that sticks out from under his white chef's shirt and a tattoo on his butt that his older brother Danny gave him when he was four. All the waitresses have seen it, on many occasions, and Donny perhaps overdoes it a bit when he drops his drawers to his ankles to put it on display. Nobody can quite figure out what the tattoo is exactly. Some say it's Alabama, others say it's a fish, but at the slightest mention of either Donny can be seen scratching his hip trying to decide if that was his cue to drop 'em.

He always offers to go back to the walk-in with any new waitress to "show her his meats". Since Jack only hires girls with waitressing experience, none of them have taken him up on the offer. Walter's guess is that he's all talk and just needs attention.

Sometimes after work Donny hangs around to give Walter a hand mopping up, and now and then they get to talking - especially when Walter breaks out the bottle of Vodka he keeps stashed in the freezer.

Donny once got so loaded that he tried to kiss Walter on the neck. Walter just nudged him away and he tumbled into a vat of rice pudding. Walter's never told anyone about the incident and he's not really sure whether the extra cheese Donny's been putting on his Burger Deluxes is in thanks for his silence or an attempt at persuasion. He tries not to think about it too much and stays away from the rice pudding.

Walter actually doesn't talk very much to anyone at the diner. He just leans against the back counter listening to his walkman when it gets slow. The waitresses tease him and hoot when he leans over to wipe off the tables, but otherwise leave him alone. The girls usually hang out by the revolving pie case and shoot the shit waiting for Jack to go back in the kitchen so they can grab a slice of shortcake and whoof it down in the ladies room.

They always end up gossiping about this and that customer. How Morrey the truck driver smells like he uses DW-40 for cologne. Wondering when Howie, a WWI vet, is going to kick off and if he keeps dead mice in his pockets or if it's just his age that makes him smell that way. Gloria keeps asking to see his colostomy bag but Howie denies having one.

But every once in a while you'll get that dark stranger who's lost his way and ends up at Lou's. The girls used to arm wrestle to see who got to wait on his table. Dot, being 130 pounds heavier than any of the rest, would almost always win. So now they draw forks out of the bin; first one to pick a fork with egg on it wins.

Why, once back in the old days, after a sweat-breaking arm-wrestling match, Mable, driven by supernatural forces, managed to beat Dot for the first time and found herself taking the order of a tall man with a thick accent and very nice boots. He claimed to be a Russian composer who was seeking political asylum so that he could dedicate himself to the true art of composition. The Communists, however, having heard his first symphony, were of the opinion that he'd be better able to serve the Union as a kennel assistant for Siberian Huskies. He escaped over the Berring Straits in a dog sled and was now trying to make his way down to Nashville for some American music festival. Mable said it was just some story he made up to get her in the sack . Which, of course, he did. According to Mable.

Dot, however, remembers the affair with a little more detail. She recalls that Mable filled his tomato juice half-way up with the grain alcohol that she kept in a flask hidden in the water tank of the ladies' john.

Jack used to have strict rules against drinking alcohol at work that nobody else really understood. Sobriety didn't fit into the local code of work ethics. Everyone said that he was just superstitious on account of the fire at Lou's caused by a bottle of bourbon, but that he'd get over it. And so he did. And little by little the flasks and bottles came out of their hiding places and some even wonder from time to time if Jack hasn't already had a few when he opens the joint up at 6 am.

Twenty years ago, Mable's stash was in the toilet tank and Dot says she used it to distort Mr. Russian Composer's better judgment before she dragged him out to his car and had her way with him. The whole affair, however, was kept quiet for some years due to the fact that Mable's devoted husband Vern was the cook at Lou's at the time, and while she was working on international relations, he was rolling dough for Tuesday night's turkey pot pies.

Vern was a Vietnam vet but denied that there was even ever a war. He doesn't remember ever leaving Pennsylvania and if you ask him what he was doing in 1969, why he'd reply he was flippin' burgers at Lou's.

Mable said he used to talk what sounded like Vietnamese in his sleep and every once in a while at the diner instead of finding the broiled T-bone steak like she wrote it on the check, she'd get kimche and curried dumplings on a bed of spiced rice.

Mable said that he'd been wounded in a way that only a wife could know and that she almost couldn't bring herself to marry him because of it. (Some say that she was born of a she-wolf and raised by humans. This is how they explain not only her peculiar appetite but her "uncontrollable instincts" at every full moon, as well.) Times, however, were hard and two incomes were better than one. So she decided to marry Vern and tried popping valium every time there was a full moon.

Despite her rumored lineage, Mable wasn't exactly unattractive. And if it weren't for the two warts on her bottom lip and the bald spot that she hid admirably, she might not have even needed to use the grain alcohol. But every little bit helps.

Anyway, this affair was hushed up on account of everybody was afraid how Vern might react. And when Mable was undeniably pregnant everyone thought the kimche would hit the fan. But Vern took it pretty well.

"Uh, Vern, honey. I think I'm pregnant," said Mable 8 months gone.

"Well then, I guess I'll just have to buy another fishing rod. Pass the soy sauce would you pumpkin?"

Vern proved rather adept at being a parent. He could change a diaper just as well as he sautéed mushrooms, but despite his persistent requests, Mable wouldn't let him try to do both at the same time.

He did all the father-son things with Walt that his father had done with him. They stacked wood, shot deer, fished and spat as if Walt were his own son. He even taught him the family secret of how to skin a possum and use its intestines to lace up his boots.

When Walt was about thirteen, Jack gave Vern a couple tickets to a Pirates' game. Vern had never been to a professional baseball game, but took Jack's word that it was a centuries old father-son tradition. That Saturday Vern lubed the truck while Mable packed sandwiches, and he and Walter were off to the big city.

Late that night Walter walked into the house and Mable asked where his father was. Apparently they got to the stadium alright, but before the band could finish the first verse of the national anthem, Vern was biting the tops off the beer bottles, throwing them into the crowd and screaming in Vietnamese. He then dashed for the exit, disarmed one of the guards and ran off through the parking lot. Not really able to concentrate on the game with everyone staring and all, Walter took the sandwiches and went to hot wire the truck like his father had taught him, then drove home sitting on a stack of old issues of "Guns & Ammo".

Sightings of Vern are still being reported, but no one's come forth with substantial evidence as to his whereabouts. Some people claim to have seen him dance the tango on Star Search. Others say that there's a picture on the jacket of a Vietnamese cookbook that looks just like him. But neither Walter nor Mable entertain fantasies of him ever coming back.

Walter started bussing tables soon after Vern's disappearance to help pay some of the bills. And just the other week, he got himself a sort of promotion. Donny, it seems, was on trial for charges of indecent exposure so Jack figured he'd have him teach Walter the ins and outs of line cooking before he was sent to prison and Lou's was left without a cook.

"The thing you got to remember, Pat, is that these girls - with all due respect to your mother, of course - are as impatient as a bitch in heat. Make 'em wait and they're liable to bite your balls right off," he said tying a bandana a little too tightly around Walter's head.

Walter didn't yet have the reactions of a seasoned chef such as Donny. Like when he tried to flip a medium rare sirloin and accidentally dropped it behind the grill. Not ever having seen anyone actually clean behind the grill in the five years he'd been working at Lou's, and not being able to distinguish it from the other greasy blackened lumps to be found there, Walter just figured he'd get a raw one from the fridge and start over.

Before Walter even got his hand on the fridge door, Donny was down on all fours fishing the old one out with a broom handle. With the blue light of the broiler reflecting off Donny's tattoo, Walter changed his opinion about Alabama and decided that it must be a frog doing a polka.

With a quick rinse, the lost steak was good as new.

After a week behind the line, Walter started to get the hang of diner cooking. He learned, for instance, that turkey breast, Virginia ham, roast beef, ravioli, spaghetti, and hot dogs are all boiled in the same water before serving. When Gloria complained about a roast beef platter that she claimed had been ordered with sauce on the side, Walter knew it was only a matter of rinsing off the meat in warm water and sticking it on a clean plate.

Walter fell right into the ways of diner cooking and after work late at night lying in the back of his pick-up looking at the stars, Walter got to wondering whether his father would be proud.

As things turned out, the charges against Donny were dropped on account of not one of the 37 eye witnesses actually saw the defendants face, and the jury didn't accept police sketches of tattoos as a valid means of positive identification. So Donny was off the hook and Walter was back to bussing tables.

All the girls said he did fine behind the line and that there was no reason why in a few years Jack wouldn't let him take a few shifts. Walter said he'd talk it over with Jack later.

"Why, Pat, you's prob'ly jus as good as your pappy," said Gloria biting off a hang nail. "Not surprising, of course. You was born to work the line. It's in your blood. Why I remember when Vern would be working and you'd be in the back playing crash up derby with heads of lettuce and throwing your GI Joes in the deep fryer." Gloria started laughing and had to readjust her underwear.

The girls, assembled around the pie case, started reminiscing about the old days and eyeing the shortcake. Walter took advantage of a dirty table as an excuse to get away, then fled to behind the counter and put on his walk-man. By now he had heard all the stories and wasn't nearly as amused by them as the girls were.

Business was slow. Jack filled his coffee mug and cut himself a piece of pie. Donny was in the back trying to get the new Dominican dishwasher to look at his tattoo.

Gloria, looking for a little excitement to spark up this boring Saturday afternoon, egged Mable and Dot into an argument over who was actually the oldest waitress. As usual they got out of hand and Jack had to get up and go over to tell them to take it outside. Jack and the other waitresses stood at the window as the two 50 year old ladies slugged it out. Mable had made sure to have Walter hold her dentures for her. She had lost her real teeth over the same argument ten years back. Walter stared at his mother's blackened teeth which were now smiling up at him from his own palm, then dropped them in a tub of dirty dishes and took it back into the kitchen.

"Mom and Dot are at it again, if you're interested."

Donny had always considered violence somewhat of an aphrodisiac.

"Come on, Miguel, you gotta see this."

Walter took the tub of dirty dishes back through the empty kitchen and set it down on the floor next to the walk-in fridge just below a 1978 calendar picture of Farah Faucet's nipples and slipped out the back door to his truck. He came back in with Vern's old 45, shut himself in the fridge and shot himself through the head.

The back of his skull flew off and landed in the fruit cocktail and blood sprayed over the bin of salad. He fell over and broke his teeth on the metal shelf then landed with his open skull leaning back on the door.

The thick insulated refrigerator walls must have absorbed all the sound of the blast, for it was several hours before his body was found. You can imagine Donny's surprise when he took Miguel back to the fridge to do a couple of whip-its with a canister of instant whipped cream and found he had trouble opening it because Walter's head was frosted to the door.

Donny, a little dumbfounded, had trouble convincing anyone to go back to the walk-in with him. All the waitresses were too busy looking for Mable's false teeth. He kept insisting and finally Jack consented. He saw what had happened and for a minute just stared. Then he stepped over the body, took Walter's bottle of vodka out of its hiding place and called the police.