I am back from a week at the Cape (Cape Cod for those of you not from around here). Most mornings I would go out in search of a diner to have coffee, breakfast and time to write. Each morning I would come back from my diner experience and everyone in the house would asak me “How was THIS diner?” Fact is, none of the ones I visited rated high on my diner rating scale.

Diners have been a part of my life ever since my divorce nearly 20 years ago. At the time I moved out of what was at the time, my dream house (The house I am in now has been my dream house for the past sixteen years, but that is now. This was then.).

I loved mornings with my family. Getting the kids ready for school. Fixing breakfast. (I fix a wicked good breakfast). Taking the kids to school. One member of my church at the time (Hi Tracy!) used to comment at how happy I seemed “being a dad” in the mornings and I was. Moving out, so the kids could stay and at least have the stability of living in the only home they knew, was hard. I was crushed by it all. And mornings were the worst. All that silence. All that empty time.

So I found a place to have breakfast. I would wake up, take my laptop and head to Mill Mountain Coffee. It had a lot of things going for it. It was close. It had a variety of coffee called “IV Drip” that had both a kick and taste. And there were a lot of regulars.

That is how it began. And I kept up the habit long after I acclimated to living alone. In fact, it has become something of a ritual. Get up. Go to the latest diner.

There is the diner that some of you recall me calling “My Favorite Diner.”. (That is it in the picture at the top of this post.) It’s had five owners since I have been here and I have eaten my way through all five of them. The last owners, Ray and Adrian, set the bar for what a perfect diner should be. It was that diner, housed in an old train station, where I developed my diner rating scale.

My best friends know of this scale and when I visit a new place, they always ask how it was. They are not looking for a “It was fine.” or “It was OK.”. No, they want me to go through the scale.

What is the scale? It’s got X items.

1. Coffee: How good is the coffee? Is it always hot?
2. Service: Do the waiters or waitresses have personality? (more important than are they good at what they do.)
3. Internet: The faster the better because I often use diners as an office.
4. The Locals: There is this delicate balance of being sociable and letting me alone to write. I like diners best when I get some of both as I become a regular.
5. Music: I like a variety of music. At my favorite diner, the owner was a musician and you never knew what kind of music you might get in the morning. But it was always good. He set the bar.
6. The Food: Yeah, this is the least important in my rating scale. I’ll put up with mediocre food if the other things are there.

There was my favorite diner, which had it all. The last owner was an amazing cook. But he and his wife were great people. She was an artist. He was a walking encyclopedia of food and music. They always hired… interesting waitresses. You already know the music was good. I loved that place. I ate there several days a week. Pretty much every day they were open. Often for hours. I had my own corner, and because she was an artist, she gave me a corner to hang and sell my art. Unfortunately, Ray had to have a hip replaced, and he never re-opened.

But there were others. There was the diner in nearby Poultney I called “The Relentlessly Cheerful Diner.” Their food was not so good but they made sausage gravy over a chicken patties that was to die for. (I don’t find most places up here do Southern Style gravy well.). The music was good. The coffee was strong. The rest was so-so, but it was very yellow, with great light and a fun mural on one wall. Thus, relentlessly cheerful. They closed.

There was a diner I did not get to write about very often. I called it the “Doomed Diner”. They opened next door to the diner I go to now, which has been around since the fifties. They had never run a restaurant before and it showed. Nothing was good there. I knew from the first visit they would not make it. And they didn’t.

And there is the place I go now, the one I call the last diner standing. Before everything else closed, I called them “The Second Place Diner” because everything they did was just a notch below my favorite diner. (Except for the people. The people here are great.) Everything is mediocre. Not bad. Not stand out. But they have one thing going for them: They are here, every morning. And have been since the fifties.

I love my diners. Being a regular. That odd sense of being both anonymous and part of the place. I have made friends in my diner. I have become known and a few of them have used me as their coffee swilling pastor when they do not have a church, but need a pastor. I have done funerals for a couple of them. I have celebrated with a lot of them. A few have visited and joined my churches. I like the white noise of people coming and going all morning. I like that I can stop and listen and hear stories that probably should not be shared in public, but with everyone in their own little bubbles, they forget.

I could write a Peyton Place novel from my diner listening. I could but I never will. I live here after all and don’t want to be driven out. I also listen to get a sense of which way the political winds are blowing. The people here are a microcosm of America. Fascinating.

And, I write. In my journal. Poetry. Emails and work stuff. It is as if the white noise hits a switch and writng just flows. I don’t work at it, it just comes. By the end of my couple of hours in a diner, my depression is always better. I can face the day with inner strength intact, rebuilt, strong.

And, when I travel, I have a way to rate other diners. But the bar is high. Ray and Adrian created a critic.

There you have it. Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom