Where nothing is fancy, everything is good, the toast is plain and buttered just right, the sausages, exactly the way you like them and the eggs — when you say you’ll have them over m’easy, a phrase you invent on the spot, they understand — the staff have been there for seven hundred years and could work at the fanciest restaurants in the world and show them how it’s done. Among other things, they call you hon the correct way and when they ask how things are they actually give a hoot. And that orange slice! And the packet of peanut butter. Mint tea in the silver thing that leaks and well-thumbed newspapers stacked on benches for anyone to read. The young woman, slightly stoned or wanting to be, who comes in and orders a juice, drinks it down quick then says she forgot her money and would it be okay if she went to get it. Staff says sure, hon, you do that. And while she’s gone they take her empty glass away and there’s something in their face that says they know she won’t be back but that’s okay, that’s the way it is sometimes. And then the young woman comes back, with her money, and orders another juice. It’s that kind of place.
(P.J.’s, Whitby, ON)
♦
Other (not always) wordless friends:
Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman
Matilda Magtree 
I want to go there for breakfast — RIGHT NOW!!!
I’ve just read a book my niece lent me about a girl who has a magic world map. All she has to do is write down someone’s name on it, or a place she wants to visit, and presto bongo, she’s there. When she’s ready to go back, she writes ‘home’ and presto… well you get the idea. You need one of those. Don’t we all? xo
You have such a gift, Carin, telling the story of you, there, the juice girl, and the right kind of ‘hon’ … I’ll join there for breakfast one day.
hot damn!
marvelous, like everything you write. Toast and jam for me, please…
(:
Perfect storytelling.
What everybody else said, and also, you have an amazing gift for colour!
I’m not sure which I’m more enamoured of – the picture or the story, Carin, ’cause they’re both enchanting. Who doesn’t love a restaurant like that – and a story like that, I ask? Something about it says summer – as in, let’s sneak away from Mom and Dad and go to the cafe where all the cute boys hang out and the waitresses treat you like an adult?
Ah, you’re tapping a summertime teen memory. There was a place not far from my house as a kid where I’d sit (alone) sipping ginger ale or Mountain Dew (yahoo!) while playing Lennon’s *Imagine* over and over and over again on the tiny private jukebox in my booth. It would seem I’ve liked diners (and solitude) for yonks. Not to mention imagining…
But, yes. There’s something so real about these places. I guess that’s why they last. And why they’re so often imitated. Gems, every one of them. And the people.