We Do Love a Diner

Wherever we are, my mom and I love to go to diners for breakfast. We relish the low-key ambience, the speedy service, and not least, the food, which is usually delicious and predictable. When I lived in Louisville, we regularly went to the Twig-n-Leaf, a local gem in a prime neighborhood that has periodically been threatened with commercial development, but which has been saved time and again by Louisvillians who are passionate about historic and nostalgic preservation.

“The Twig,” as it’s locally known, was established in 1962 from a Dairy Freeze; it’s perched on the busy corner of Bardstown Road and Douglass Boulevard and advertises itself with a large neon leaf sign blinking the motto “Tops in Food.” The décor of stools, booths, and old-school cash register primes any visitor for the experience, and my mom compares other diners we visit to this quintessential one.

At any diner, I always order some variation of eggs and breakfast meat, but I feel I must have either a pancake or biscuits and gravy; we’re at a diner, after all.  My mom, though, always has the same thing: black coffee, two fried eggs, wheat toast, and bacon. This is just what she eats at home. She is a Southern lady who enjoys the country club, but when it comes to breakfast, she wants no frills.

Mom and I have had our share of misunderstandings over the years, some typical for all mothers and daughters and some unique to our situation: my dad left before I was born, and her life with my stepfather sometimes seems to mirror that of their own parents. Our priorities usually don’t match, and we do not share the same political or world views. My mom is smart, but sometimes it even feels like our roles are reversed and I become the mother. But the things we do have in common are coming around to mean more and more now that I’m in my 40s and she is in her 70s.

We like to explore new places with itineraries I’ve planned, me usually knowing what she will enjoy versus what will be “too much.” Growing up, we took family vacations with my stepfather and stepbrother, but as we got older my mom and I started taking trips together, just the two of us or with friends. While I lived in Kentucky, we saw Loretta Lynn perform in Little Nashville, Indiana, attended Bette Midler’s Las Vegas show for my mom’s 60th, and visited Graceland and the Grand Ole Opry. We even got to dance with Loretta’s son Ernest Ray in the bar, after the show! My mom was nonplussed by my love of “old country” music, having grown up on a working Kentucky tobacco farm where it blared incessantly, but she was always game to come along if I planned the occasion.

When I lived in DC in 2021, we met in Maine and drove up the coast to look at lighthouses. Neither of us felt the need to go up in each one, which was lucky because half of them were still closed due to COVID restrictions.  After a lovely stay at Hawk’s Head Inn in Walpole (owned by the delightful Steve, who makes meat pies from scratch to sell in town), we began at beautiful Pemaquid Point Light where we had our respective usual breakfasts at The SeaGull Restaurant, looking out over the water.

Afterwards, we took advantage of the perfect September weather and explored down close to the scraggy shoreline, where we took silly pictures together and my mom photographed the colored rock formations, seaweed, and points of light on the water. She always means to draw more (and she is very good) and this was the latest scene she wanted to portray. We then headed north towards Bar Harbor, stopping along the way to see Owls Head Light and Rockland Light.

I plan the dinners on these trips, too, ensuring that lobster is on the menu if we’re near a coast. We could make a collage of the pictures of her in a lobster bib, showing her playful side by looking overexcited each time a fresh one arrived. In Bar Harbor, we grimaced while holding live lobsters on a boat tour before heading to the famous Geddy’s for a steamed one that evening. The next morning’s offering of powdered eggs and melted orange cheese at the Bar Harbor Grand Hotel paled in comparison to our usual diner breakfasts, but when I suggested we should’ve found a diner, my mom’s defenses about money (another remnant from the childhood on a tobacco farm) went up: “But this was free.”  

The first concept of a diner supposedly appeared in Providence, Rhode Island, when entrepreneur Walter Scott repurposed a horsedrawn wagon to serve coffee, pie, and eggs to late-night carousers; he was so successful that he was able to make this his full-time profession. I was delighted to learn this fact after my mom and I experienced some of the most diner-y diners in that state in the fall of 2023.

We headed to Rhode Island to see the bed-and-breakfast I had lived and worked in during the winter of 2020, in Narragansett, but we spent time in Providence, gorgeous Block Island, and Bristol as well. Niccobella’s, around the corner from Hotel Providence, fit the bill to serve up our usuals (with an extra crispy pancake to share) on our first morning.  we made our way through Narragansett for lunch and on to Point Judith Light, near where we boarded the Block Island Ferry.

The ferry had been closed for three days due to severe storms; this was the first day it had reopened. We thought we had left Narragansett in plenty of time, after only one small argument, but parking at the ferry was more of an ordeal than I planned for (Take note: always carry cash in Rhode Island!) and we breathlessly lugged our bags up the ferry steps just as the engines began to roar. It was then we noticed that no one else had a bag with them—they had known in advance to stow them right at the entrance of the boat, a detail that our shared anxiety caused us to miss.

The Block Island Ferry bar opens as soon as the boat pulls into Block Island Sound, raising its wooden screen on screechy rails to reveal a full bar, coffee, and snacks, including toasted bagels and chips. I was first in line to order our drinks, almost flinging my mom’s gin and tonic at her as we shared a laugh, relieved both that we had made it and for the drink. The ferry bucked on the still-rough water and we slid back and forth on the wooden booth seats, holding our treasured libations close to ensure they didn’t splash onto the floor.

After disembarking, slightly nauseous, and settling into our rooms at the National Hotel, I went to look at some local shops while she napped before dinner. One shopkeeper immediately brought up the fact that the ferry had been closed for days, which prompted me to ask what kind of medical facilities are on the island. He told me there is a basic medical clinic but no hospital, and when I asked what happens if someone suffers a medical emergency when the ferry is closed, he exclaimed, “Ya die! Ya do!” without hesitating. I laughed, but he unsmilingly shrugged his shoulders and went about his business, completely serious. “I know people, I tell ya.”

I love the personalities in places like this, places that are so beautiful and mystical and somewhat cut off from the rest of the world; it takes a certain type to live year-round there, I think. By the time my mom and I met up at the hotel bar an hour later, we each had a story to share.  She laughed at “Ya die!” and told me how charmed she was by the fact that the hotel didn’t have an elevator, requiring an old-school bellhop to carry her bag to her room.

It was here that she brought up how uncomfortable she still is with my recent-ish revelation that I was in love with a woman, and she wanted to flesh it out further, formalizing the labels, etc. To say she was uncomfortable with it is putting it mildly, but mostly it seemed she was sad that she hadn’t guessed while others did. It didn’t turn into an argument, but I assured her I had no more answers than she did. Indeed, I had been more surprised by that turn of events than anyone! We headed to dinner around the corner where her lobster mac-and-cheese stole the show, and we were thankfully able to move on to other conversation topics.

The next morning, we headed to Ernie’s Diner and ordered our favorites, this time me substituting the toast and bacon with an English muffin and sausage. We sat at the counter near the register. I tried to pay with a credit card when the time came and we were delighted when the server looked at me with annoyance and barked, “I don’t take those” before walking away, unconcerned with our reactions. We loved her directness and knew we were in the wrong anyway after we spotted the “Cash Only” sign.

We were sad to leave the splendor of Block Island (especially the menagerie of animals around the corner from the diner, a farm with horses, alpacas, ostriches, frogs, goats, camels, kangaroos, a yak, and pigs, all hanging out together in one field!) but excited to head to Newport and then on to Bristol, further north. Along the way, we toured two of the Newport mansions and snacked on cheese and grapes in the café of the Breakers.

I had unwittingly booked an electric car for the trip, which was plugged in nearby, charging at an inexplicably slow rate. At first, I couldn’t figure out where to plug in the charger (a hidden springing door in the front grill of the car… really?) and then couldn’t figure out how to get the car released from the charger.  Frustrated, I dramatically exclaimed “God-damnit!!” more than once, but my half-joking tone made my mom laugh instead of cringe as she might’ve at home. By the time the charger clicked an hour or so later, indicating that it was finally released, my mom expressed how impressed she was at my independent handling of the situation, something she wasn’t sure she could’ve done without becoming genuinely upset.

On our last morning, we happened upon what must be the most treasured diner on the East Coast, Hope Diner, in Bristol. Set in a low building facing the Bristol Harbor, it was bustling when we arrived and seemed as if it was staffed with actors, all expertly trained to act like they worked in a diner. Like any diner worth its salt, the kitchen was completely open, and we could see the tattooed cook flipping ten things at once while he whistled. The servers bustled back and forth, shouting orders in diner lingo from one end of the place to the next. My mom pointed out the cushioned standing pad stationed at one end of the bar where the servers waited for their orders to come up, which were slung in front of them with expertise.

“Don’t be a dope, eat at the Hope!” sang their motto from coffee mugs and t-shirts for sale, hanging on the wall. We delightedly ordered our plates and reveled in the atmosphere while we waited, my mom commenting on each detail and on the “old salts” sitting on stools at the bar. The handwritten whiteboard near the counter stated the day’s specials and included things like “little necks with linguini,” “fried smelts,” and of course, chowdah.  My mom filmed the scene with her phone before we left to preserve the voices and sounds of our last diner breakfast before leaving Rhode Island. I’m long old enough to buy my own souvenirs, but she bought me a T-shirt in addition to the meal: her love language.

My mom has traveled a lot, but I wait for these moments together where I feel like I’m showing her the world (maybe something of my world?) and we share something, just the two of us. Exploring together is when we have the most in common, and when her creative side shows itself the strongest. I’m still struggling with a sense of home, wanting to go there but not quite knowing where that is. We lived together when I was growing up, and I wanted for nothing material, but I still missed her. This is ongoing for both of us. But, when we sit across from each other at a diner, sharing a pancake, we make up for lost time and I don’t want it to end.

BIO

Originally from Kentucky, Allison found her first passion playing medieval and pirate Legos before finding her adult passion in cultural anthropology.  This led to a 12-year career in refugee resettlement, beginning in Kentucky and ending in Washington, DC at the end of 2019. Allison then took several road trips around the U.S. before falling in love with Narragansett, Rhode Island while working in a bed and breakfast there in the winter of 2020.  She is currently a Grants Manager for Habitat for Humanity and loves travel, storytelling, finding our shared humanity through humor, and ABBA.