For the 18 years she worked at the Milford Diner, Rosemary George considered it her home.

So last week, when the former waitress, who also cooked and bused tables, returned to the newly restored and reopened restaurant on the Oval, she couldn't help but marvel at the changes.

There was the Betty Boop statue on the sidewalk outside the front door holding the daily menu board. Inside, opposite the counter and stools, was a sea of shiny chrome and Formica tabletops circa 1958 and pillow-back chairs.

There was a second room with more antique tables, a jukebox, an old washboard washer, a 1950s stove and the face of James Dean staring down from a poster on the wall near another depicting Shirley Temple.

And there was a ladies room painted the color of bubblegum and decorated with starched, cotton little girls' dresses, remnants of a bygone era.

All of this quickened George's heart.But what stole it was the ambience.

"This place is just gorgeous. I can't believe it," George exclaimed after walking through the door.

Debbie Flerra, operator of the Milford Fish Market, and her partner, Gordon Maynard, spent about a year scouring New England antiques shops for the ranch-style chrome kitchen sets that have replaced the traditional booths in the 75-plus-year-old diner.

The couple renovated the restaurant from its most recent incarnation as a sushi bar and pool hall, installing a counter and 10 stools and a black and white checkered floor, arranging the dining room with 12 Formica-topped tables and pillow-back chairs, and painting and decorating the walls to evoke the New England diners of their childhoods.

The diner closed in the fall of 2005 and reopened as a sushi bar, a business that was short-lived. The building was vacant and in disarray when Flerra and Maynard decided to revive what has been a tradition on that spot since 1913. In addition to restoring the diner, the couple renovated the space downstairs, a former lounge they converted into an upscale restaurant and bar called River's Edge, a tribute to its location overlooking the Souhegan River. The establishment is one of two new restaurants on the north side of the Oval. Recently, a Chinese buffet opened in the historic Eagle Hall, the town's first meeting house. Flerra, a former nurse who left the profession after her husband's unexpected death 10 years ago, said it took more than a year to find period decor for the diner. She said she wanted both the menu and the interior design to exude nostalgia. "We saw the Milford Diner as a landmark in the town of Milford. It was sitting vacant, and we thought we could bring it back to life," Maynard said. "That was our goal: to have a place where people could meet and talk." Flerra said she wanted to re-create the diner experience she remembered from her adolescence. "It's comfort food, what you were brought up with," she said, recalling trips to the Owl diner in Lowell, Mass., and the Red Arrow diner in Manchester. "That's the secret, that it's homemade." Staff photo by Bob Hammerstrom A Betty Boop statue stands outside to greet visitors to the newly reopened Milford Diner. Indeed, on opening day, Flerra had her chef, Culinary Institute of America graduate Dan Parker, prepare macaroni and cheese, a childhood favorite. She also put shepherd's pie, beef stew, club sandwiches, a selection of pies and other traditional diner fare on the menu. By definition, a diner is a prefabricated restaurant building reminiscent of a train's dining car that has a counter and stools, serves homemade food and is open earlier or later than other establishments. Historians generally agree the first diner was a horse-drawn wagon operated by Walter Scott, a pressman at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, who sold sandwiches and coffee to his fellow pressmen starting in 1872. Commercial production of lunch wagons, according to some experts, began in Worcester, Mass., in 1887, and in the late 19th century, these restaurants served patrons in busy downtowns across the Northeast. Historians say the "lunch wagon" became a "diner" after 1925, when prefabricated buildings began to replace wagons. Like the lunch wagon, the diner allowed a proprietor to quickly establish a food-service business. According to Milford history, a diner has been situated on the site of the current Milford Diner since 1913. Maynard, the co-owner of the new business, said customers have traced ownership of the restaurant through six former proprietors. One man told him he almost bought the diner in 1957. "You've got to put the clock over here," Flerra said a customer told her, offering an example of how patrons have helped her to re-create previous versions of the diner. For George, what distinguishes a diner from other restaurants is the food, the service and the personal touch.

"It's usually a nice meeting place with good food, and people like the atmosphere," George said.

By turns, television and the movies have glamorized and poked fun at the diner, stereotyping the tough-talking waitress with the heart of gold, the temperamental chef and a cast of customers who share their joys and sorrows.

The real-life diner experience wasn't so different, George said.

"The diner was my family, and I knew all my customers," she said, adding that she worked seven days a week, including a double shift on Wednesdays.

"If I got stuck, got slammed, my customers would get up and help me," she said. "They'd pour the coffee, pick up the bus bucket and bring it into the kitchen."

In the movies, diners are places where people fall in love, break up and reveal their deepest secrets to strangers.

In real life, there are similar scenarios.

"You hear all their life's stories, and tell none," George said.

Jane and Paul Karavas, a Milford couple who took George to lunch at the diner last week, were her regular customers for years. They said George was kind to elderly guests, and so devoted to her regulars she would sometimes spend her own money to buy a pie or a kind of jelly that was requested that wasn't on the menu.

The regard was mutual, it turned out.

"There wasn't a thing my customers wouldn't have done for me," George said.

Originally published online here: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071021/BUSINESS/310210083/-1/news