Pretty much every day or so for the past three weeks, I’ve driven past the Parkway Diner in South Burlington in hopes of seeing some sign of renewal.

The diner closed the last Sunday in March and might reopen with new owners in May.

The Parkway Diner must reopen because in Vermont, the state of recurring crises, we suffer through a chronic and acute diner shortage. All the ink goes to the dairy crisis and the lamprey crisis and the ski crisis and the maple crisis, but the diner crisis might be the most persistent of all.

A diner is described by Webster’s dictionary as “a small restaurant built to look like a dining car,” and “a small restaurant with a counter along one side and booths on the other.”

I am not going to point fingers here, but not every place that claims to be a diner in Vermont is really a diner. Part of the diner experience is the option of sitting at the counter on a bolted-down rotating seat having a front-row seat to watch your eggs fry, close enough that you run the real risk of being splattered by bacon and burgers spitting from the grill.

Coffee must be poured from carafes with a ring of brown residue around the glass belly and into chipped mugs. Muffins should be kept under glass near the counter eater, and there should always be a cook or a dishwasher emerging from a hidden back room, his or her forearms bearing the purple scars of a career on the short-order hot seat. He or she should preferably be wearing a hair net.

Small boxes of Special K should be in full view at all times. The coats of doctors, lawyers and furloughees rub shoulders hanging from common hooks between booths.

Obviously, the list is long — stainless steel must be in abundance as a decor, and no matter what time of day you are there, the staff should be transitioning from breakfast to lunch or lunch to dinner or dinner to breakfast fare.

Equally as long as the list of what a true diner has is the list of what a true diner does not have. A true diner doesn’t have a liquor license, mood lighting or sorbet.

A true diner does not have a waitstaff that drops your check on the table, then collects the check with your cash or plastic and returns with change. You pay your own bill on your way out, at the register. Near the register are complimentary toothpicks and business cards for local tradesmen — stump grinders, dog groomers and gutter cleaners, that sort of stuff.

I want to tread carefully here as I discuss the contrasting menu offerings of diners and nondiners. I mean no offense to the many New England Culinary Institute alumni and internationally trained sous chefs we have in Vermont. We’re very lucky to have them.

That said, not every menu item in every restaurant needs to be pan-crusted; I don’t always need arugula drizzled with extra virgin olive oil harvested in sustainable micro-climates by fairly compensated indigenous peoples; slivered almonds are not mandatory.

Sometimes it’s OK to just crave a burger or an omelet or a short stack or a nice Yankee bean soup prepared by somebody who doesn’t fancy himself or herself an artist — just a cook.

Vermont has for a long time narrowly averted diner-shortage chaos. Now, with newspapers taped over the windows of the Parkway Diner, the crisis is hitting uncomfortably close to home.

We have many fine restaurants in our state. But sometimes a body just wants to eat in a diner where there are grains of rice inside the salt shaker. It’s a comfort thing.

Originally published online here: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070417/COLUMNISTS05/70417016/1007/NEWS02