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Roadside diners -- silver oases for hungry travelers

© Brian Salisbury

Roadside diners, those bastions of casual eating, 24 hour breakfast, easy parking, local culture and come as you are hospitality. For motorcycle riders, diners present a logical and welcome stopping point at most any time during a day on the road.

Bikers usually meet for breakfast and get organized at a local diner before they take off for a day of riding. When traveling with others or alone, bikers will roll into one of these silver and Formica eateries for a midday break or an end of the ride repast. And after dark, all night diners provide a bright oasis, especially along empty byways and in small towns that have rolled up their sidewalks.

When my riding buddies and I recount the highlights of various trips, we often zero in on meals eaten at unique diners. For example, the Lamont Diner in Wyoming. This establishment was originally a railroad passenger car. Somehow, it found its way into a dirt parking lot at the edge of a prairie town. The steps leading up to its front door were wobbly stacked cinder blocks. The car was painted red and it stood solidly on its original steel wheels.

We rolled into the Lamont Diner's parking lot early one summer morning after traveling about 100 miles across the chilly prairie. I can't remember what we had for breakfast, but I do recall that for $1.15 it was one of the most filling and inexpensive meals I've ever had on the road.

Then there was the Eggs In A Skillet diner located in downtown Newark, New Jersey. When the cook finished frying a customer's breakfast of eggs, ham and hash brown potatoes, he'd slip a wooden trivet under the frying pan. He'd then place the whole sizzling business on the counter in front of the patron, who would proceed to eat right out of the frying pan.

And that's all the place sold, eggs in a skillet. Too bad if you wanted oatmeal or pancakes.

This eatery could seat only about 30 customers at a time, so the place frequently had a line of hungry people waiting out front to get in.

Diners are uniquely American. They've evolved from wheeled lunch wagons that made their debut in the late 1800s, to stainless steel streamliners, to large roadside establishments with extensive menus. Their numbers and popularity have always been greatest in the Northeast because that's where the manufacturers were and are.

The word "diner" comes from "dining car," and it reflects the styling that diner manufacturers borrowed from the railroad. But, while some diners are actually converted railroad or trolley cars, most were built originally to be stationary eating establishments, not rolling stock.