Waldoboro, ME
Don Mortenson will officially retire from his job as cook at Moody's Diner on Thurs., June 26, but friends and family gathered two days early to celebrate his 41 years at the beloved diner. He thinks he might finally paint his house after working 16-hour days, six days per week, year after year.

"He's supposed to work at five (a.m.) and he'll come in to work at a quarter to four," said Seth Genthner, the cook who will be filling Mortenson's position.

According to Nancy Genthner, Mortenson worked at a gas company when he wasn't cooking at Moody's. She said he would work a full shift at what was then called "Home Gas" and directly after go to work at the Waldoboro diner. He would then go back to work at the gas company for another shift.

Over time, various people took photos of Mortenson on the job. Dan Beck, current Moody's Diner Manager and co-owner, presented a slide show of these photos to honor Mortenson and to show the perhaps forty friends and family who joined him. In many of the photos he bore the same surprised expression, but in most, he was hard at work. In all of the photos he had a beard.

"Have you ever not had a beard?" someone asked. "Well, I shaved it off once, but scared the dog," Mortenson said in response.

By Elaine Thompson | Worcester Telegram & Gazette | June 24, 2008

The former Edgemere Diner, which sat vacant for three years, reopened in the spring as The Edge, and business is booming.

The owner, David Kupstas, an Auburn native who lives off Lake Avenue in Worcester, said between 1,000 and 1,500 patrons pop in each week. He estimates that he sells about 2,000 hot dogs — his specialty — each week. The bulk of his business is people who work in the area who come in for lunch.

“We turn the lunch-hour crowd over four or five times. A lot of days, there’s a line going out the door between 11:30 (a.m.) to around 1:30 (p.m.),” he said. “We’ve really just been going on word of mouth. It’s phenomenal. Once somebody comes in they bring back friends.”

The classic-looking 1940s-era diner car at the southern end of Flint Pond sat vacant for three years before Mr. Kupstas’ winning bid to purchase it in October. He purchased the diner from the town for $5,000 and is renting the Route 20 property on which it is located for 20 years. The monthly rent will be $1,500 and will escalate annually with the consumer price index.

Peabody, MA
The Foster Street Diner will hit the road on a flatbed truck this week, bound for the American Diner Museum in Providence.

Workers arrived yesterday to begin removing the structure from its foundation. The diner will be headed south later in the week.

"If we don't work on it ourselves, we'll find a new home for it," said Daniel Zilka, acting museum director.

The 80-year-old diner is part of a dying breed of Worcester Lunch Cars built as rail car replicas between 1907 to 1960, Zilka said. The lunch car company started with serial number 200, and Foster Street Diner's number is 598.

The Peabody structure was originally purchased by Charles Burnham, who placed it at 178 Main St. near the Salem line. Burnham bought a near duplicate numbered 609 and had it placed in Lynn, said Zilka, who has Worcester Lunch Car Co. records at the museum.

Zilka and other diner enthusiasts want to preserve the Peabody lunch car and find it a new owner.

"Enough is there with the original counter, the original windows, that we thought it was worth saving," he said. "These are so ephemeral because these are wood-frame structures."

By Margot Sanger-Katz | Concord Monitor | June 19, 2008

If you saw a diner traveling down Interstate 93 last week, you weren't hallucinating. The 1930s-era Barr's Diner had just been removed from the grounds of the New Hampshire Motor Speedway and was on its way to the Diner Museum in Rhode Island for restoration.

The diner sat on the speedway property since the mid-1950s, that is, before the speedway sat there. Diner historian Daniel Zilka believes it dates to the mid-1930s and was built by the Jerry O'Mahony Dining Car Co. of Elizabeth, N.J. Over the years, it has served as a diner, gas station, carryout deli and, most recently, an office hub for the transportation crews on race weekends. But the years have taken their toll on the structure. John Zudell, the speedway's vice president of operations and development said the building was cramped, lacked access for the disabled and had a leaky roof.

A new modular building has already moved it at the diner site, just in time for race weekend. The diner itself will be restored by a group of vocational students as part of the museum's New Hope Diner program, which matches diners in need of work with students from a local juvenile corrections facility. The speedway put up more than $13,000 for transportation costs and hired Bow's Rick Geddes to haul it. According to Zudell, Geddes has transported enough diners to have a special trailer for the purpose.

The building's future after restoration is uncertain, according to Zilka, the acting director of the museum.

"Our main goal is to preserve diners and diner culture," he said.

Former Vale-Rio chef hopes to fill void left by popular diner's closing

When Phoenixville's beloved Vale-Rio Diner closed in February to make room for a Walgreens and a Starbucks, many borough residents were sad, and others angry, about losing their favorite local spot.

So, the Vale-Rio's devoted former regulars may be skeptical about whether the new Phoenix Diner, which will open next month just up the road in the Acme shopping center on Starr Road, near Route 23, can ever replace their old haunt.

But chances are good that they'll like the food. That's because they've been eating it for the last decade. The new diner's owner is Ali Ghouneimy, who worked at the Vale-Rio as a chef for 11 years.

Ghouneimy, who was born in Egypt and has lived in Phoenixville since 1997, decided to open the new place because "people need a place to go. They miss the Vale-Rio, and this community needs a new place. So I had the idea to open one myself."

The Phoenix Diner's menu will be similar to the Vale-Rio's, but will offer more items, said Ghouneimy. On weekdays, it will be open from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., and it will stay open 24 hours on weekends.

Meanwhile, the basic structure of the Vale-Rio Diner was moved and it is sitting across the street from Ghouneimy's diner, partly covered with a black tarp. The Vale-Rio's owners, brothers Francis and Richard Puleo, own the property on Newhall Street. and would like to reopen the diner there, but zoning restrictions prohibit it. They are petitioning the Borough Council for approval to amend the zoning regulations, but according to Francis Puleo, it could be years before it reopens, if it ever does.

"The Cup," a long time roadside favorite in Pottstown, PA, is on the market. According to this website, you can get this "vintage vente" for around a half a million dollars.

Roadside chronicler and photographer, Debra Jane Seltzer, who has photos of the cup on her website, the Pottstown Cup is one of three such structures which were built in the area by the Levengood Dairies in the 1940s. They all still exist, in varying states of repair.

Huntington, WV
Smith's Midway Drive-In, a drive-in hot dog stand in the 400 block of West 6th Avenue first opened its doors in 1939. Wednesday, after two years of financial struggle, Midway has reopened its doors.

Smith's Midway Drive-In was first shut down in February of 2006 due to delinquent back taxes. A lawsuit was later brought against Midway for over $24,000 in employee compensation that was also delinquent.

Now, under the new ownership of Bill Ghiz and Corey Hutchinson, Midway is once again open for business. All of the financial issues were settled and Ghiz and Hutchinson acquired the building this week after leasing for a year, Hutchinson said.

The store, renamed Midway West, was filled with customers eager to once again taste a piece of Huntington history.

"We have been waiting for this place to open for two years," said Carol Crossan, 68. "My mother and I have lived across the street for 66 years. She sent me over here today to get her something. We were very sad when they first had to close."

The Business Review | Albany, NY | June 3, 2008

The former Silver Diner in downtown Schenectady will be sold to a local construction company that specializes in historic renovations, under a tentative deal outlined by city officials.

Prize Construction of Niskayuna will buy the former railroad car diner on Erie Boulevard for $1, maintain its art-deco styling and restore the interior as its new office. The company will also consider an expansion in the future so the building can be used again as a diner.

Under the deal, the Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority will loan $40,000 to Prize Construction for renovations. The Downtown Schenectady Improvement Corp. will provide up to $50,000 from its facade improvement program.

Photo by Ron Dylewski

Prize Construction will spend at least $90,000 toward renovations.

The deal is subject to approval of the City Council. The city took possession of the property several years ago through a tax foreclosure.

Metroplex Chairman Ray Gillen said it would cost more than $40,000 to demolish the diner or move the building to another site.

Ed Zemeck, president of Prize Construction, said, "We have already had the opportunity to apply our skills on two gems in the city - Proctors and the [Central Park] Rose Garden. We are pleased to work with Metroplex, DSIC and the city to make the Silver Diner once again a vibrant part of downtown Schenectady."

Built in 1936, the diner has a stainless steel exterior and contains elements of an original railroad car. The diner served scores of General Electric Co. workers who poured out of the main plant at the foot of Erie Boulevard during the company's heyday in the city. Historic preservationists have pushed for years to spare the diner from the wrecking ball.

The hard-knocks journey of Sherwood's Diner from its heyday on Foster Street in the 1950s to mothballs to a Rhode Island juvenile detention center may eventually lead back to the city.

The Worcester Historical Museum is evaluating a proposal to set up and operate the diner - once it's restored as part of training program for at-risk teens in Rhode Island - at the visitor center and history museum complex planned for the area of the junction of the Massachusetts Turnpike and the recently completed Route 146 extension into the city.

"This is a very significant offer, and we're taking it very seriously," said William D. Wallace, the museum's executive director.

The planned new museum and Worcester visitor center, part of the $300 million Route 146 project, is slated for the old Washburn & Moen factory.

Project planners and architects still must weigh in on the idea of incorporating the historic diner into the visitor center and museum, and a deal with an outside vendor would have to be worked out to operate the eatery, Mr. Wallace said.

"I think it's an exciting idea, but we're still a long way from decision time." He plans to go see the restoration effort himself tomorrow.

Sherwood's was a Foster Street fixture for two decades until it closed in 1969. In the years that followed, the diner was put in storage, moved to Auburn to become an ice cream parlor, closed again, vandalized, picked over for souvenirs, left to rot for a decade, and eventually preserved. Finally, in 1999 it was mothballed by the American Diner Museum in Providence.