Betty’s Restaurant, February 5, 2012

I left the Potomoc River home of my still-sleeping hosts before seven in the morning and drove all the way through Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to the Food Lion on the other side of town. They were open but had only Sunday Washington Posts, stacks of them; no Sunday New York Times. Still searching for the Times, I stopped at the Sheetz gas station on the way back to the river house. Same deal, not a N.Y.T. logo in sight. Continuing on German Street, back toward Rt. 230 and my hosts’ home, I noticed a clean well-lighted place, the only business open on the town’s main drag. It was a restaurant called Betty’s, a down-home old-style main street-type diner; extreme chintz and hand-lettered everything. (Click attached picture to enlarge.)  Inside, there was a sign up front that said “Please Wait to be Seated.” Two older men and a single woman about the same age were seated all the way in back, each in individual booths.

The waitress, a very pleasant young woman, on the chubby side, called out to me “You can sit anyplace, sir.” I took a booth just in front of the other three residents—so close I could overhear the conservation between the two men and the waitress. They were discussing their various health issues, weight, high blood pressure, and their mutual love of chocolate. Two more men in our collective age group came in and selected individual booths just in front of me. The waitress greeted each one by name. I said, smiling up at the waitress, “Gee, I wish I was a regular!” “You can be one,” she said, laughing, “I’ll treat you right.” She took my order—two eggs over medium with sausage gravy and one biscuit. As she walked away, I noticed a newspaper rack up front and went to check it out. Bingo—a huge stack of Sunday New York Times off to one side!

As I settled back in my booth with my treasured newspaper, several more male customers came in and they, too, took individual booths. Again, the waitress greeted them by their first names and brought them coffee without waiting to be told to do so. Then she placed a cup of steaming black coffee exactly halfway down the empty counter and left it there. A minute or two later another older man came in, picked up a local paper from one of the racks and sat down at the coffee cup waiting for him on the counter. He and the waitress exchanged greetings and a bit of banter.

Shortly after that, she topped-off the coffee cup of the man in the booth directly in front of me, then scratched his back. Then she topped-off my cup and said, “Plus one for you, too,” and scratched my back. I laughed and said, “Now I really do feel at home!”

So, of course, on the way out, as I paid the waitress for my breakfast, I told her, “I will be back,” and gave her a very generous tip. She said, “Now you do that, hon—and soon, too, OK? You’re my new best buddy.”

“Mutual,” I said. “Very, very mutual.”