Bonney Lake: Part 1

It's Autumn, and the sun is blinding. The air is crisp and the ground - wet. I set a sleeping Micah on the booth beside me. Five Star Diner. A beautifully rickety hole-in-the-wall diner. Pictures of airplanes and customer-colored pieces of paper adorn the walls. If I knew what this place was, I probably wouldn't have come here, but I felt like adventuring into rural Washington, and I admit, the name appealed to me. I love diners. Something about the world a diner creates, makes me feel like I'm in a movie. I feel like that now.

I'm the only customer here, until a short, stalky trucker and his spunky, overweight wife enter the diner - a hunched-over old lady trailing behind them. The woman seems as though she just walked off the set of a cheesy children's show. Her personality is almost more animated than the springy curls in her hair.

The man sits in the corner - the sun, a bit intrusive. He can't quite get comfortable.

"Hey! How are you guys doing today?!" The 50-year-old waitress obviously knows who they are.

"Great!" says the woman in her slightly southern, slightly white-trash dialect. "And would you mind turning off that big light in the sky? It's a little bright!" she says laughing out loud at her cleverness. I smile in my booth.

The waitress brings me my strawberry-lemonade. Did I mention it's Autumn? The sun confused my appetite. Free refills, and by the end of my stay at 5* Diner, I will have consumed two full glasses of strawberry lemonade.

The old lady comes wobbling out of the restroom after a record-breaking 15 minutes for a urination. Her hair is parted down the middle and pinned to the sides...("quester!") Her oversized, gold-rimmed glasses don't budge...like they're a permanent fixture on her face.

"I'm from Kansas!" she says to the waitress. "Just 40 miles outside of Wichita."

"Well, ya ain't in Kansas anymore, Toto," I mutter under my breath, before realizing - that's something the other woman could've said.

... she looks like a Toto ... the old lady.

An old man with glasses and a baseball cap walks in and grabs a newspaper. He sits facing me behind the triad of characters sitting next to me.

"I'll be right with you, Richard!" yells the waitress from the kitchen.

"Take your time, dear!" he says while flipping through his newspaper - his eyes never looking up. He ends up ordering 'the usual' and looks lovingly at the chunky waitress who slightly resembles Babe from 'Charlotte's Web.' She's sweet.

These hashbrowns are amazing. Until about halfway through, that is, when the amount of butter starts to make me nauseous. I resort back to the strawberry lemonade.

Roo wakes up and wants to play. I take him out of the car seat. He's a hit with my fellow patrons. He always is. The waitress come back to meet him.

"I have a grand-daughter who's almost one month old. First girl in 48 years! You better believe she's gonna get spoiled."

Five 5 * Star Diner Grub

An interested Micah is anticipating the inevitable meeting with our fellow patrons...and the big light in the sky...

Regular Richard