SPEAKER_02: Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do Hall of Famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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SPEAKER_04: Hey everybody, get this, Chuck and I will be back on tour this January out in the Pacific Northwest. On the 24th of January we'll be in Seattle at the Paramount Theater, and the next day, January 25th, we'll be in Portland, Oregon at our beloved Revolution Hall. You can get tickets on presale right now. Use our offer code SYSKLIVE or the promoter's offer code TRUEWEST and then general sale tickets start Friday. We'll see you guys in January.
SPEAKER_09: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
SPEAKER_04: Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the greasiest of the greasy spoons edition. That's right. May I have a moment at the top here to speak to our layoff of last week that no one even knows because to Stuff You Should Know listeners, we're right on time.
SPEAKER_04: I'll step aside into the wings as the spotlight zeros in on you.
SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, I just wanted to thank everybody. We lost our dog, Charlie. We had to put our eldest Charlie to sleep last week. And so I wanted to say thank you to all the people on Instagram who were so kind. Many, many hundreds of people commenting and many, many thousands of people hearting. And that always helps out. But this was a tough one. We've lost five animals now since Stuff You Should Know launched, which is remarkable, don't you think? And a huge bummer.
SPEAKER_02: Huge bummer. But Charlie, it was rough. This was Ruby's first loss. Oh, man. And she insisted on being there. So we kept her out of school. And the vet comes out of our house and Ruby was there for the whole thing. And she did, you know, it was devastating, but she did great. And many, many lessons were learned.
SPEAKER_04: Man, that's amazing, Chuck.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she did a good job. It was, I mean, they're all very hard always, but I think maybe being Ruby's first made it a little tougher even. She had a, I think I've been saying it this way, which is when you have an eight-year-old, you hear all different kinds of cries at your kid. And they all have an agenda, usually. Right. Like, I didn't get this or I wanted that or I'm hungry or I got hurt or whatever. Like, they all have like a different sound and a different meaning. But this one was brand new and this was a cry of pure heartbreak. Man. And it was awful. So it sounded different and it was not something I want to hear again anytime soon. Yeah. Had no agenda attached to it and I think that's what part of the awfulness was. It was just heartbreak. So it was rough. We got through it. And I know I told you guys this personally, but I want like the world to know how amazing you and Jerry are for basically just saying. Like this, we record on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Two hours before we were set to record is when we decided to do it. And like, we got to do this tomorrow. So I was clearly not going to record then. And then we did it Wednesday and Thursday rolls around and I was still was in no shape to do it. And this screwed up our schedule and you guys were just really supportive like family is. So I want everyone to understand that.
SPEAKER_04: You got it. Of course. We wouldn't be any other way because we are family. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_02: Now we are in phase three. The decision is phase one, which is awful. Doing it as phase two and now the not there-ness is the extended just sort of muscle memory of all the, you know, the routines that are built into your life with a pet that all of a sudden you go to do and it's not happening. So we're adjusting to that. I was holding it okay for phase one and two, but you just got me with phase three.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's the little things like, oh, Charlie licks the cat spoon.
SPEAKER_02: So when you do the cat's meal, you go, your body still goes to put the spoon down stuff like that. And then you just have to lick it yourself and sob while you do.
SPEAKER_04: That's exactly right. I've been eating a lot of cat food. That's got to make the whole thing that much worse. I have been sick to my stomach, but it's pretty tasty.
SPEAKER_04: Well, on behalf of everybody who knows and loves you or even people who don't like you. I'm very sorry that you guys had to go through that. That's an awful thing. And I can't even make myself get into your shoes. I won't do it. So don't I am just you can take the month from a you can take the month off one day when when you need to.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't want to talk about that.
SPEAKER_04: No, you don't have to so.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, well welcome back now.
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about diners. I think it's a good word.
SPEAKER_04: We're easing into diners like it's a warm bath. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, because diners agreed.
SPEAKER_04: Maybe the easiest topic we've ever done in our entire lives. I cannot think of an easier one. Can you? Well, I mean, I think we've had a lot of stuff that's easy.
SPEAKER_02: Like any of the toy episodes stuff like that is all easy. Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right.
SPEAKER_04: But this one I don't know for some reason it just struck me as easy. It has like a lot of like narrative arc. It has overlooked pop culture here. They're peppering with it. It's got some neat little just kind of pull points bullet points that we can go over. I just like it. It's just easy and thanks to Livia for helping us with it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, oh and speaking of Livia this turned out to be a great assignment because Livia's sibling-in-law runs a diner. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02: Ember is Livia's sibling-in-law and they restored not only a diner but they restored the Worcester lunch car number 765. Man. From all the way back in 1939 and that will all make sense what that is shortly. Yeah, it'll be impressive. Super impressive but this is in Morin. It's the Morin Square Diner in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Mm-hmm. And this thing is awesome and the genuine article and they serve, you know, like a diner food but updated and not fancy but, you know, it's just sort of a more modern telling. Like there's some vegan options and it's from local farms. It's sort of elevated diner food. Right. So go say hi to Ember. Yeah, hey Ember and the diner. I know where I'll be eating next time I'm in Fitchburg.
SPEAKER_04: I know. Where's Fitchburg? I don't know but what's the name of it again? Tell everybody so they can go.
SPEAKER_02: The Morin Square or for all I know it's the Moran Square Diner. M-O-R-I-N.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, that's great. Thanks to Livia for helping us with this one. Thanks to her family members for keeping the diner thing going. And really Chuck, if you want to thank anybody, I feel like we have to thank Walter Scott. Let's do it. So Walter Scott, the reason we're thanking him is he is a printer from Providence, Rhode Island. And this was at the time where people who were in one profession could break into completely other professions. It's just what they did back then in the 19th century. Not like today. No, not like today. You like keep your head down and stay in your lane. That's what you do. That's right. So Walter Scott decided that there was a whole market that was being missed. That there were people who worked the late shift and when they were either going into or coming off of that shift, the restaurants weren't open. There was nowhere for them to get food. They didn't have cafeterias at work. They were totally est, you know? So he said, I'm going to start selling food to these people and the best way to do that is to just sell it out of a horse and carriage, basically.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which was essentially a food truck. They called them lunch wagons. And he got copped pretty quick or imitated, I guess, because people, you know, back then, ingenuity and starting a new business was all the rage. So this guy named Sam Jones, who said, all right, I'm going to start up my own late night food truck wagon. I'm going to name it the Owl. It's going to be in What's the Mass? And Walter Scott was like, I hadn't thought of naming it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a pretty good name too for a late night eatery. For sure. And that was imitated and people, you know, it was a viable business all of a sudden. Jones expanded his own enterprise in 1887 by saying, hey, let's go ahead and make one of these that actually has a kitchen and maybe a few spots at a counter where you can eat. Yeah. No servers yet at this point. It's just like people got their food through a window. And then he started adding more and more carts and then he moved to Springfield, added more carts there. And it was a legit business at that point.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so between 1872 and 1891, the concept had been born, added upon, and then was patented in 1891 by a guy named Charles Palmer. And Charles Palmer bought Sam Jones' Worcester setup when Sam Jones moved to Springfield. And he's the one who patented it. He said, I don't know why you didn't do this, but I'm going to patent it. And his design was extremely simple, but he added a counter. So now there was a separation between the kitchen and where you sat inside the dining area, like in the actual diner. He added those windows, or at least he patented those windows that you handed food to other people who were just taking it to go. Just the barest minimum of an idea. He went and patented it, but it eventually became diners. And what's interesting is the reason it became diners was not from like some normal evolution. It was from social pressures instead that basically took these mobile food trucks and said, hey, take the wheels off of those things, guys. Yeah, well, what happened was, you know, this was such a viable business model for people opening these.
SPEAKER_02: And this is what happens a lot of times with early sort of innovations is then you innovate around it. So companies that manufactured like buildings and things and as you will see, railroad cars, they saw that people were doing this in little structures. And they said, well, we're going to start manufacturing these little food wagons and just selling them to people. These boxes on wheels with little kitchens. And maybe we'll make them kind of cool looking on the outside and paint them so they're aesthetically pleasing. And we can ship them. We can ship them on trains. They're small enough at this point where you can put them on a truck if you need to. And there were three big builders of these at the time, the Worcester Lunch Car and Carriage Manufacturing Company. This is a Massachusetts. And then there was one in New Jersey called the Jerry O'Mahoney Company and then the P.J. Tierney Company in New York building these sort of made to order little restaurants that you can just plop down and start working on.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and like you said, the Marin Square Diner, Livia's relatives diner in Fitchburg, they redid or refurbished a Worcester Lunch Car and Carriage Manufacturing Company prefab. Yeah, number 765. Yeah, there are some still around, not just from that company, but it seems like there's a lot of Jerry O'Mahone's still around and in operation. Like they built these things solid. As a matter of fact, one of them, I think it might have been P.J. Tierney, said if there's something wrong with it or your thing starts coming apart, put it back on a train, ship it to us, we'll tune it up and send it back to you. Which I mean... And then he was like, nobody's going to do that. No, exactly. I can't imagine anyone took him up on it. I mean, what a pain that would be. But it kind of goes to show, like they stood behind their craftsmanship and just the fact that these things have been around for 100 years, some of them haven't even been refurbished. Yeah. They did a good job making them, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: And then kind of what you were talking about in the early 20th century, you start parking these lunch wagons everywhere, a couple of things are going to happen. Restaurants nearby are going to say, hey, wait a minute, what the heck, these people can just move all over town and serve wherever they want. That's no good for us. And then people that lived in these towns and some of them, they're like, I don't like these things moving all over the place and parking on the street. So they just started to park it where they were and just serve food from one place. And in 1913 with the Jerry O'Mahoney Company, they started producing sort of the same thing, a prefab restaurant, but this time they were made to just sit there.
SPEAKER_04: Right. They were about 26 feet long, which is really specific, right? Yeah, it was very specific.
SPEAKER_04: And I think Jerry O'Mahoney, I think it was, no, Patrick Tierney was the one who took this idea when they started making them stationary and was like, let's dress these up a little bit. So like if you look at some of the old ones that are still around, like they have like hand laid tile, the wood sometimes has like carvings in it. They're pretty neat. They're very cool. And they look super 1920s. I think there's one called Casey's. I can't remember where it is. I think it'll come up later. Where like the light fixtures are original to it too. But this whole thing was like, it was a diner that came to you, the diner owner, on a train car and then was taken to your location and set up. And you would hook water up to it and gas up to it, bring in your appliances and just open your doors and start serving hash browns, I guess. Or at the very least, hash.
SPEAKER_03:
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's how you made your initial money, I think.
SPEAKER_04: So the deal with why they're called diners is very simple.
SPEAKER_02: It's because they were shipped on these trains. In order to fit on the trains, they were shaped like railroad cars. And they essentially were modeled after railroad dining cars. So they called them diners, like the diner car on a train. And they were sort of smoothly curved for aerodynamics. And like you said, Tierney came along and added some chrome. This was in the 1930s when that Art Deco thing was happening. And so that's why the diners, sort of the classic diner that you think of, has that chrome look and neon and these padded benches and built-in booths. All modeled after these cool trains and their dining cars at the time.
SPEAKER_04: If I remember correctly from our Googie episode, though, that streamlined, modern look that you think of with the classic diner that was modeled on the trains of the time, I think the trains were actually modeled on ships. I think the ships were the ones that originally had that look. And then it was taken from that for buildings and trains and diners eventually.
SPEAKER_02: You may have been thinking of Mickey's, because Livia listed Mickey's Diner in St. Paul, Minnesota as one of the Oh Mahoney ones. And just do yourself a favor and look this thing up at some point if you're listening, because the Mickey's Diner in St. Paul is beautiful and gorgeous and kind of a perfect quintessential example of these shipped prefab restaurants. I think the one I'm talking about is Casey's Diner in Natick, Massachusetts.
SPEAKER_04: Is it Casey's? Okay.
SPEAKER_02: I think that's the one. They're all gorgeous, though. They are. And that's the one that still has like hand-laid tile and it looks like the original light fixtures and all that.
SPEAKER_04: There's still some pee in the toilet from the very first customer. Like it is authentic. Should we take a break? I think so now. All right. Somebody at Casey's needs to go scrub that toilet and we'll be right back.
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SPEAKER_04: So we have like a, oh we're back by the way Chuck, just FYI. I know it's been a minute since we recorded. But the kind of view that we have of diners today is set in time as we'll see, and it's set in a certain period of time. But prior to that, there was a pretty different view of diners. And it was, that it was like basically a working man's place to get grub. And it very much grew out of where diners originated. They served food, grub, to working men. And you didn't have to basically be particularly genteel or mannerly to go to a diner. So diners started to get reputations as places where, you know, if you're a middle class man or a woman of any kind, you would probably steer clear of diners up until about World War II. That's the reputation that they had. Even as cool as they looked, you didn't really go there unless you were like a blue collar dude essentially. There were of course people who would kind of break custom and go. But for the most part, that's kind of what they regarded as that kind of place. Like a Dave and Busters today. Right. You know what my beef with Dave and Busters is? When was the last time you went in one or have you ever?
SPEAKER_04: Oh, I have. It's been a really long time.
SPEAKER_02: There aren't enough just regular arcade games. Mm-hmm. I know.
SPEAKER_03: Everything is weird now.
SPEAKER_02: And giant. Yeah, they'll have like a Pac-Man, but it's on a 15-foot screen. Right. They just need an area, you know, a little bit for our generation who are taking children and stuff to where, you know, Dad wants to play a little Galaga and Dad can't.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'm totally with you, man.
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, kids love them. They don't know what a Galaga is. No, they're dumb. So the menus at this time were not the most expansive. I know diners these days are kind of known, like you go into a good Greek diner and there's like nine pages of things. You can get a pot roast or you can get an omelet. Yeah. But back then it was kind of grab and go or you would eat kind of quick because you got to get back to your shift or if you didn't have to get back to your shift, you just ate and kind of hung around and maybe gambled a little bit or something like that. You shot crabs at the local diner.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_02: It was like, you know, what you would imagine, like eggs and, you know, stuff like that, this real satisfying, maybe a sandwich, but pretty limited. They were generally owned and frequented at the time by second generation, maybe first generation European immigrants. So you might also find some sort of local to their place in Europe stuff like you might find spaghetti or a goulash or something like that along with some American style stuff.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. So the fact that you can find the best baklava in America at diners is follows in that tradition because so many diners are owned by Greek immigrant families. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Well, should we go and talk about that? Yeah, why not?
SPEAKER_04: Because apparently there was a point in time, if it's not still going on, where Greek immigrants basically ran the show as far as diners went in the entire United States.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I think, uh, Libya found one source that said 90% of diner owners in the U.S. were Greek. And not only that, they were from the island of Carpathos or Carpathos. I'm not sure how they pronounce it. I'm going with Carpathos.
SPEAKER_04: Carpathos?
SPEAKER_02: What did I say? Pathos? Carpathos.
SPEAKER_04: I think that's where Balki came from. Okay.
SPEAKER_02: And there were a couple of waves of these immigrations. The early 20th century, they would own coffee shops in Greek neighborhoods. But the diners that we're thinking of today happened after an influx of Greek immigrants in 1965. And like a lot of businesses, sort of where you might think like, boy, it seems like a lot of people from this country run this kind of business. It's because they come here. They run it. Their family works there. And then the son or daughter maybe splinters off and opens one. And some of their family might come over and cousins and work there. Right. And it's just, it's a family business. And it expands in such a way where all of a sudden 90% of them are Greek diners. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: It also explains that those coffee cups that were huge in the late 20th century in New York that were blue with white lettering and kind of like a classic Greek style. Because the Greeks owned the diners. It's just as simple as that. Which I know the Broadway diner that used to be here in Atlanta, that was definitely owned by Greek people. There's one on, not Holcomb Bridge, what's the other bridge that's down off of Piedmont?
SPEAKER_04: Cheshire. Cheshire Bridge. I can't remember the name of that diner, but that's owned by Greek people. These are like prime quality diners too, by the way. But I don't think I've been in a diner that didn't at least show its Greek roots by offering like baklava or euros or something like that. And maybe even my life. I don't think I've been in a diner that wasn't a chain that wasn't owned clearly by a Greek family.
SPEAKER_02:
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Same here. So that 90% checks out I guess is what I'm trying to say. Anecdotally at least. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: I agree. So post World War II, we kind of brought you up to World War II and what it was like. Post WW2 brought all kinds of changes to America, a couple of which were really important as far as diners were concerned. One was people, you know, there was sort of an economic boom, so people had a little bit more money to eat out at restaurants, which wasn't a huge thing prior to that. And the other thing that happened was suburbia kind of started happening, which included one, families moving to suburbia, and two, big facilities and factories and plants in suburbia, but they had their own cafeterias. Right. So their markets were sort of declining in one way, but at the same time, these middle class families started coming out and they wanted to eat in these diners. And so they made changes to sort of accommodate for that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: They were so lucky because their market just bottomed out like almost overnight after the war. And the fact that they were able to just kind of adapt and change their whole jam and be successful again, hats off to them. But the way that they were able to kind of find another market was that those families that have more money to eat out. And interestingly, I hadn't thought about this, but a lot of women entered the workforce for the first time in World War II. And after the war, a lot of them stayed in the workforce. Like this custom had been broken and there was a new social acceptance of women working. It was more socially accepted than it was before. And if you're working every day, you probably don't want to cook every day. So now, not only does your family have the money to go eat out, you have a great incentive to go eat out if you're the mom too, like let's go eat out somewhere. But you don't want to spend all of your money every time you go out. So diners kind of moved to the suburbs and said, tada, and opened their doors. And those families with a little extra money and working moms came to eat there.
SPEAKER_02: That's right. And I'm going to go ahead and stop people emailing to say, Josh, you missed a great joke opportunity. Oh, what was it? Well, when you said hats off, you probably should have said my fez is off to you. They don't wear fez in Greece.
SPEAKER_04: Isn't it Greek in origin? That's Northern African, like Moroccan or something, or Tunisian. Okay. I think you're thinking of Shriners. And there may be some Greek Shriners, I'm not sure. But in Greece, they wear those little kind of sailor's caps almost, like a sailor, it's a cross between a newsboy cap and a sailor's cap, captain's cap. Okay.
SPEAKER_04: Do you know what I'm talking about? Look up Greek cap.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what? I just looked up fez is Moroccan, but it's actually ancient Greek in origin. That seems like a pretty wild technicality if you ask me.
SPEAKER_04: It is, because it's probably not associated with Greece.
SPEAKER_02: But look at the Greek cap.
SPEAKER_04: You'll know exactly what I'm talking about. We'll wait.
SPEAKER_02: But I bet there's a name for it, right? The Greek cap. It doesn't have a... I don't know. Oh, yeah, like a Greek fisherman's cap. Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_04: That's exactly what I mean. That's what you would find somebody wearing at a diner who worked there. Yeah, a skipper cap or a Breton cap.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so there you go.
SPEAKER_04: So I tip my Breton cap.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, we were talking about women all of a sudden being like, hey, I don't have to cook all these meals, that's great. Right, and then the diners moved to the suburbs and found like a whole new market.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and the other thing that they did to help sort of, you know, they kind of cleaned up their act a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And said, hey, listen, you guys, maybe don't gamble inside the restaurant. They started, all of a sudden, there were servers. Like they wanted to make it a more, you know, full restaurant kind of experience. So you don't even have to get up and go get the plates of food now. We're going to have people serving them to you. They were like, what? Yeah, domesticate them. And teenagers all of a sudden, it was like, hey, we can go hang out at the diner after school or like these things are open late at night if we're up to no good. We can go by the diner and, you know, and pour a little whiskey into our soda pop. So also, another thing that domesticated those diners was that those servers were in large part women.
SPEAKER_04: The new servers that had been brought on board were women. And that signaled to families like, hey, this is a safe place. Like, if I'm safe to work here, you're safe to eat here, hun. Right. You know? Yeah, that's a good point.
SPEAKER_02: Is what they would say. These were still prefab restaurants for the most part, even post-war. But they added more windows. They added like sort of that pastel color theme that you see in diners came along then. Yes. Sometimes mirrored ceilings. Tile floors. Yeah, tile for mica counters. That's that 1950s kind of look because they had to all of a sudden, you know, cars were zooming by on the road and they had to get people's attention to stop and eat. So the diners had to look, you know, cooler. And that's kind of where that googie thing come in. You might have a cool googie sign. Right. So a car would go, ah, I got to stop there. Right.
SPEAKER_04: So the image that you have of diners, like popular diners that you see in like a movie like Grease or something like that or Happy Days or whatever, that was, it solidified in this era. The suburban post-World War II diners, the image that we have of diners is like the classic thing.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Still mainly a northeast affair, but starting around the 50s and into the 60s is when they tried to expand west and south. And it didn't go quite like it did in the northeast. In the south, I think people associated diners with the northeast. And the war of northern aggression, I think, still too.
SPEAKER_02: Well, sure. In the south at the time, there were just a lot of things where it was like, oh, you know, that's how the northerners do it and we don't do things that way. So we didn't have diners down here like they did up there. No, not in classic style, but diners in everything but name were here pretty early on.
SPEAKER_04: I think Waffle House started in 1955. And I'm sure there were diners that, like Silver Skillet has to have started before the 50s. It is old. The Majestic.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, old.
SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, we had things that just weren't prefab. They didn't look like trains necessarily, although some did or had some qualities like that. They just didn't call them diners down here because diners were Yankee. Yeah, that's pretty much exactly right.
SPEAKER_02: Right. Well, we can go ahead and talk about Waffle House because they kind of figure in, in the 1950s, these new places, these new chains started popping up that, you know, you may not call it a diner, but something like Denny's opened in California in 1953, originally Denny's Donuts and morphed into Denny's. And Denny's and IHOP, which was in 1958 also in the LA area, they're both essentially diners. And even then kind of how they look on the inside and the things they serve and the spirit. Waffle House is a diner, like kind of full stop. They even, I don't think they're prefab, but like I think opening a Waffle House is like this kit. In a box. That gets built. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, but they have like all of the classic trappings of a diner. There's the kitchen area that's separated by a counter that people sit at. There's servers that come out from behind the counter to help the people in the booths. Booths, booth seating is like actually a diner innovation from way back. And you know, there's a door that separates the booths that you come in. Like this is a diner. It's a diner. Inexpensive food. Yeah, exactly. That can, may or may not give you dysentery. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02: I love Waffle House. Dude, I ate at Waffle House the other day and it was not good.
SPEAKER_04: I did too.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the first time I've eaten there in years. Where, what did you have and where did you go and why? I was on, in Smyrna.
SPEAKER_04: Okay. I went because I hadn't been in a while. Okay. I was craving scattered and covered hash browns. Okay. And it was just gross. I don't know if I've changed. Was it really? Or this particular Waffle House was bad. I don't know. But it was a gross experience for me. Like gross.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm sorry to hear that because I think one thing Waffle House is known for is their remarkable consistency of like the food is kind of exactly the same at all of them. Okay, sorry.
SPEAKER_04: I don't mean the food. The food was generally fine. I mean like watching a cook drop something on the floor and just pick it up and use it to cook with stuff like that. Oh, really? Okay. There was a seat that had inexplicably had like a trash bag over it and some tape at the counter. Like it was just a gross scene. Interesting. And like all Waffle Houses have that just structural grease that has never been cleaned, that is holding the place together like glue. And for some reason this one was just grosser than the normal Waffle House's grease structure. All right.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I had a great experience. I actually went to Waffle House with our friend, Jon Hodgman. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Where did you go? Which one?
SPEAKER_02: Well, somehow, and this might shock some people who know about Jon, I managed to get him to the camp and he went camping before his Atlanta show. And then after the camp on the way back to Atlanta, we stopped at one in, you know, North Georgia. So that's like a more real deal experience, Waffle House, than you could probably imagine. I think also they probably keep theirs cleaner because there are very few places to eat out.
SPEAKER_04: So they kind of take pride in what they got.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was good. I had an egg sandwich and some hash browns and Jon and I split a little country ham. Oh, boy.
SPEAKER_04: It was good. You were being bad. But, boy, I used to go there a lot late night in college.
SPEAKER_02: That was the thing.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, I loved Waffle House in high school. It always has a place in my heart. I was just very disappointed that. Well, that's why you went there. It's entirely possible that I have become more of a germaphobe than I was in high school. I think you and I should hit one up at some point and see if we can.
SPEAKER_02: Okay. But if I'm just sitting there and like don't touch anything, well, no, it's me.
SPEAKER_04: You can be the gauge of whether it's me or not.
SPEAKER_02: Just to put a button on this, the very first Waffle House you mentioned in 1955, that opened in Avondale Estates, which is just a few minutes from where I live. And there is a restored, a sort of original Waffle House. I guess it was the original Waffle House. They've restored as kind of a museum. But I don't know if it's ever open. I think you can do events there, but it's never open. So I'm not even sure what the deal is. It's very strange, though. The world of Coke having like the Coke fountains, but nothing comes out of them.
SPEAKER_04: So just to button this whole thing up about like Denny's and IHOP and Waffle House.
SPEAKER_04: They were diners, but they were diners that you knew what you were getting no matter where you were in the country, because they were chains. And they really gave locally owned diners, like the real deal diners, a run for their money. And almost squished them out of existence. So too did fast food chains that were coming up about the same time. Southern California almost killed the diner, essentially is what we're saying, by spitting out IHOP, Denny's, fast food stuff like McDonald's and I think Taco Bell. But thanks to that 50s nostalgia of the 70s, like Grease, Happy Days. Shana Naa.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly. Shana Naa. I can't think of any other examples, but it was a big deal back then. They loved the 50s and in the late 70s. It managed to like rescue the diner and basically revive it and keep it alive just enough so that you could make a living again as a family, a Greek family, apparently, owning a diner and just, you know, cooking great diner food.
SPEAKER_02: Totally. Should we take a break? I think we should. All right. We'll call this the post Waffle House break. You know, what if the highlight of your travels was the traveling itself? Like picture this, admirals club membership, VIP treatment and more, and your vacation hasn't even started yet. Well, with the City Advantage Executive Card, you'll be looking forward to the journey as much as the destination.
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SPEAKER_07: You couldn't imagine that anyone could be alive and have a mutation in that gene.
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SPEAKER_02: The. All right, now I can think about is setting Waffle House right in your mind again. Well, it's not like that was its last chance. I won't be going back to that one again, but.
SPEAKER_04: OK, it sounded like you were kind of like, no, no, no. Why would I even risk it again?
SPEAKER_02: No, no, I think it could be that location.
SPEAKER_04: OK, fantastic.
SPEAKER_02: That one's dead. We should go to the one over near me where Kid Rock got in a fistfight.
SPEAKER_04: And that guy. Oh, the other thing we didn't mention about Waffle House, which is they are open 24 7, 365.
SPEAKER_02: And FEMA actually uses what's called the Waffle House index, where and if there's a natural disaster in the area, if the Waffle House actually is closed, then they will say that they were like, even the Waffle House is closed, which means we're in real trouble. Yeah, like things are really bad there because the Waffle House does not close.
SPEAKER_02: I had a Thanksgiving there once when I was alone. Oh, yeah. How was it?
SPEAKER_02: You know, it was fine and kind of fun and kitschy, but then also a little lonely and sad. Yeah, as you would imagine that. But also, it's like one of those situations where you connect with the people that you're surrounded by, strangers that you meet.
SPEAKER_04: Sure. Way more than under normal circumstances. That can be pretty gratifying in and of itself.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah. I still keep in touch with Butch and Truckee and Flim Flam and Kid Rock and all those people.
SPEAKER_04: Flim Flam, huh? What's Flim Flam about?
SPEAKER_02: Flim Flam, he's a bricklayer. Oh, okay. I know that guy.
SPEAKER_04: He's a good guy.
SPEAKER_02: Did he go to Georgia State?
SPEAKER_02: He said he lays a heck of a brick, too. Yeah, I know, Flim Flam.
SPEAKER_02: So the tie between the diner and just sort of pop culture and politics is one that's always been around. Even back in the very beginning, Livia found this article from 1896 from the Boston Morning Journal where they talked about it was a place where the fashionable gentleman could rub elbows with the homeless itinerant. But, you know, it was always just sort of like this is authentic America where all kinds of people can get together. And that is why it became a stop for many politicians when they were in town to maybe go to the local diner wherever they were when they stopped in a town when they were on the campaign trail. But certainly some diners have distinguished themselves as you have to come here basically if you're campaigning for office. It's interesting. There's one in particular called the Red Arrow Diner.
SPEAKER_04: It's in Manchester, in New Hampshire. And it was Bill Clinton who put it on the map, at least the campaign map. He apparently he lost pretty bad in Iowa. I can't remember Tom Harkin. That's right. Was it his one of his who Tom Harkin. He was a senator from Iowa. So he trounced Clinton and everybody else in Iowa at the caucus. But Clinton made a huge comeback by getting really like on the ground and shaking hands and kissing babies. And one of the ways that he did that was going to diners. And one of the diners that for some reason or another stuck was the Red Arrow Diner. And it became tradition like when you go through New Hampshire, if you're running for president in the United States, you go to the Red Arrow Diner. You have a press op there. You go meet a few people, eat some pancakes or something, and you leave. But you have to do it. You can't not do it, which is pretty cool. But the thing that surprised me is this actually goes a little further back than 1992. Jimmy Carter, who first was like, man, I want to portray that I'm going to the people. Where are the people? And then he thought, the diner, specifically the Chat and Chew, which is the worst name for any restaurant ever in the history of civilization. I don't know if that's going to track. In Tonawanda, New York. It should be the Chat then Chew.
SPEAKER_08:
SPEAKER_02: Or the Chew then Chat. Don't do both at the same time. Right. Or maybe the Chew quietly, swallow, and then when you think of something interesting to say, Chat.
SPEAKER_04: I like that name better.
SPEAKER_02: That's good. Yeah, Jimmy Carter. It's been a thing ever since then. Diners have always popped up in pop culture. There's a few notable instances. One, of course, is the Edward Hopper painting from 1942, Night Hawks, which is that classic painting of the diner. On the corner. And, you know, all kinds of people have been painted into that painting since then. Yeah, I had that poster, the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, was it Marilyn Monroe and James Dean?
SPEAKER_02: Yep, and Bogey and Elvis is behind the counter working for some reason.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay. I don't know why Bogey would be included in that. He was fine. He had a great, fulfilling, nice life. No Broken Dreams?
SPEAKER_04: Not one, from what I understand.
SPEAKER_02: There was the movie diner, of course, Barry Levinson's movie from 1982. Great movie set around these dudes in 1959 Baltimore and sort of that diner culture of hanging out and, you know, up to no goodness. Apparently that movie in particular, but I think Barry Levinson's work in general inspired Quentin Tarantino.
SPEAKER_04: His whole banter thing that he's so well known for apparently comes from Barry Levinson. Had no idea. Oh, yeah?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Yeah, well, Tarantino has a lot of diner stuff, the Reservoir Dogs opening scene. I don't tip that whole classic scene. A lot of barely scripted banter in all of his movies.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, which is heavily scripted.
SPEAKER_04: So, God, that'd be so hard to do well. I mean, Briton cap off to the actors in Tarantino movies who can memorize that stuff and regurgitate it without making it seem like it's lines, you know? Totally. Yeah. The great diner in Pulp Fiction, of course, is the Hawthorne Grill in LA, which is now in AutoZone.
SPEAKER_02: That's sad, but what about the Marti Cafe in North Bend, Washington, which stood in as the Double R Diner in Twin Peaks?
SPEAKER_04: Classic.
SPEAKER_02: It is a classic diner, so much so that you're like, that's kind of a cruddy diner. That's how well they nailed it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, big time. I think they shot the pilot in the actual North Bend location, and then they moved to a sound stage for a lot of the actual show and rebuilt that diner. But then went back to the real diner for the movie Fire Walk with Me, and I believe it was partially burned down in 2000 and rebuilt, but it didn't look the same. So in 2017, when David Lynch came out with the new Twin Peaks, they actually paid to restore that diner to its original appearance so they could film there, which is awesome. Yeah. Just goes to show you production companies get stuff done.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like when they rebuilt Avondale Mall near me because Chuck Norris drove a pickup through it in Invasion, USA. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. There's one called Tom's, well, Tom's Restaurant, I think it's just called Tom's. It's in Manhattan on Broadway, and if you've ever watched Seinfeld, that's what they use as the establishing shot for their Monk's Coffee Shop, I think, right? Yeah. And the Suzanne Vega song, Tom's Diner, is about Tom's as well.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, Suzanne Vega. Yeah. You remember that song? Sure. I'm going to tell it's an earworm. Well, I will batter you at the same time. We can drive people crazy by me singing My Name is Luca on top of it.
SPEAKER_02: All right, you ready? No, we can't do it. Should be. I will if you want. Okay, you ready? All right.
SPEAKER_04: My name is Luca. I live on the second floor.
SPEAKER_02: It definitely makes Luca more upbeat, the devastating one. Yeah, for sure. It's not supposed to be upbeat for sure.
SPEAKER_02: We can mention Casey's because you are correct. That is in Natick or, I'm in Massachusetts, how do you pronounce it? It's got to be Natick.
SPEAKER_02: Natick? Yeah, totally. Okay. And that's supposedly the oldest diner in the United States that's still a thing. Yeah, it started out as like a lunch wagon with a horse attached to it from 1890, and then it became one of those Worcester Lunch Car Company models from 1922.
SPEAKER_04: And I guess they bought that and replaced the lunch wagon with it in 1927. It's been running ever since then. That's just amazing.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely. And we got to shout out New Jersey because Jersey, and when I lived there, there was a kid from the South who only knew Waffle House, basically.
SPEAKER_02: All I heard was diner this and diner that. You know, whenever people are out loud, let's go to the diner, let's meet at the diner. I was like, what is it with you people in diners? Because I didn't know about this culture in the Northeast, and New Jersey is, I believe, still the leading state for the number of diners today.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, if you've ever watched Sopranos, it's set in New Jersey, and they're in diners like all the time. Yeah, 600 of the roughly 2,000 diners still around are, according to Smithsonian Magazine, are in New Jersey, and maybe the Jerry O. Mahoney Company being based there had something to do with that.
SPEAKER_02: Probably. But they love their diners in Jersey. Well, there you go, Jersey. This episode was for you.
SPEAKER_04: That's right. You got anything else? Nah. I don't either. Since Chuck said nah and I said I don't either, that unlocked listener mail.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm going to call this Buttons Buttons Buttons. We heard from a lot of people about why buttons, traditionally, for a man's garment and a woman's garment, are on different sides. I had heard this, but I forgot. Okay. So thanks to everyone who emailed in, but we're going with Sheila from Decatur, Georgia, because Sheila's right down the street.
SPEAKER_03: Ta-da!
SPEAKER_02: As a long time Atlantan and UGA alum, I love your show, guys, especially when you reference Atlanta and Athens. Go, dogs. Regarding your mention of buttons on the opposite side, women's clothes have traditionally been made with enclosures on the opposite of men's because of upper class royal women having assistance when getting dressed. Therefore, and people being traditionally, or not traditionally, but predominantly right-handed, therefore the buttons would be fastened by someone on the other side of the person wearing the clothes. I guess with the assumption that actually working the button with your right hand is more intuitive and easier than your left hand, your non-dominant hand. So more right-handed people means men were dressing themselves with the button on the right and women were dressed by other women with their buttons on the left. That's fascinating.
SPEAKER_04: Pretty good stuff. Who was that? Who wrote that? Suzanne Vega? That was Suzanne Vega. That was Sheila Vega, Suzanne's sister.
SPEAKER_02: Thanks a lot, Sheila. We appreciate that from you and a lot of people wrote in. So, yeah, thank you to everybody, like you said.
SPEAKER_04: And if you want to be like Sheila and the whole gang and write to us and tell us something interesting that we didn't know, you can do it via email. Send it off to stuffpodcast.iheartradio.com.
SPEAKER_09: And we'll see you wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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