Nov 14, 2025
3 min read
Y'know, I used to come here as a kid. Every week with my father, on Sunday's. We'd sit right here, in this booth in the corner. He'd come home from work, 5:30 sharp, he'd get one step in the door, jerk his thumb at me, and we'd drive down the dirt road to this little diner.
His pickup truck would bump and shake and rattle. It always made me giggle as a kid. It was a windy road, through the forests, dipping in and out of view of the coastline. Sometimes, if he was feeling goofy, my dad would speed up a little and take a sharp turn, throwing us both from one side to the other.
Man, the smell. I'll never forget it. Bacon grease and elk. I would catch a whiff of it just before we turned a corner, and gradually it'd poke out through the trees. The diner, "Sue's Place," it seemed so big back then. But sitting in here now, I realize just how small it is. It's a silver tube, a relic of yester-year, sitting in a dirt lot, all by itself. It's just long enough to fit six booths along the windows, three on either side of the door. The aisle between the booths and the bar is a tight one, but the dozen bar stools were usually empty. In fact, on Sunday's, the only people in the whole restaurant were my father and I, a neighbor from down the street, Gary, and maybe one or two other folks. All regulars, all folks we saw every Sunday, as if they were completing a ritual too.
Sometimes in the summer, right around the fourth of July, when all the families came out to the lake, the diner would be packed. a buncha tourists come down to our neck of the woods, eating at our diner. On those days, my dad and I would take our order to go. I remember being resentful about that, that we couldn't sit in our favorite booth because of all these other people. But on those nights, we'd go down to the water, and eat our burgers on the shoreline. Sometimes we'd linger until the sun started to set, and lightning bugs came out.
Thinking back on it, I'm not sure who that ritual was for. If it was for me, or my dad, or for Sue herself. My dad had an alright job, he was a foreman at a local factory. Can't remember what he made... But it paid well. Or, well enough.
When I was entering high school, Sue's place went up for sale. My dad was real broken up about that. Told me that she just wasn't able to keep up with so many different bills. A couple years earlier, my dad had started doing odd jobs for Sue. When we'd go in on our regular Sunday's, while I was eating he'd get to some small chore. Fix a squeaky bar stool, or futz with the freezer. He was good with machines. Knew how to take them apart and put them back together alright.
For a couple months, Sue's jukebox sat in our garage. It was a big project, my dad would toil on it every night after work- every night but Sunday's. When he finally fixed it- That's when Sue gave us the news. She was selling. My dad told her it wasn't enough, that she ought to ask for more. But she was set on it. Said hopefully the new owners, some big tourism corporation, would keep the place open. They'd also bough a little gift store up the road. Supposedly they wanted to build some big hotel nearby.
I remember when they broke ground for the hotel, we drove past there on our final Sunday at Sue's. She'd sold the restaurant, and they kept her on for another year or so. I'm not sure if the food had gotten worse, or if I'd just gotten older. My dad and I were the only ones in the restaurant that night. After Sue dropped off our burgers, she sat with us, talked with my dad for awhile. And when we said goodbye, there were tears in her eyes.
I miss this old place. But I wish they'd torn it down when they gave up on the hotel. Instead, it sat here, overgrown and unused. A bitter reminder of time gone by.