My last visit to the Diner...

The fictional account of the diner, Barry Levinson’s movie, “Diner” was a work of art. I truly loved it. It was, however, fiction. It was based on a reality, and on real characters, but none the less, fiction.

The late Chip Silverman wrote the book, “Diner Guys” and while I didn’t appear in the book, Chip himself called me a real Diner Guy, a real Mendel’s Guy. For my Baltimore readers this will make sense. So while I lived it, I also saw the flaws.

The last time I went to the Diner was probably 1962. A group of us went in after attending some event or other, and we sat down. No one came over to us, and we waited for what seemed like a long time.

Eventually a policeman came over and told us the owners wanted us to leave peacefully. We were stunned! What had we done? Then the realization came over us that we were sitting with a black guy! Our friend, Marvin Matthews was with us, and we hadn’t considered the consequences!

We were having a sit in! We had no idea what we were doing! We inadvertently had created an event and didn't know it.

I was mainly embarrassed for our friend.

We left peacefully (well, sort of, there was some bit of an incident) and went to Howard Johnsons which by its national foot print allowed everyone to come in.

It was my last visit to the diner.