Dingbats and Diners

Two years ago, Duckpin spent the Fourth of July hopping around Southeast Arizona. One of the highlights of our stay at the Shady Dell RV park in Bisbee was our morning breakfast at Dot's Diner, the tiny greasy spoon pictured above.

Few things are more joyful than finding the perfect diner when you're on a road trip. But what if you didn't have to hit the road, and instead just leave the front door of your workplace? Well, that's how the first diner was born. In 1872, a small wagon packed with food pulled up in front of the offices of the Providence Journal, ready to feed the newspapermen who, by the time they finished their shifts, found the doors of the town's restaurants locked for the night. According to an article in Mental_Floss magazine, a nickel could buy you a ham sandwich or half a cranberry pie. The wagon proved so popular that imitators soon followed, and eventually the typology of the modern diner was born: round stools fronting a running counter. Just like Dot's.

So who was the wagon owner who first fed the ink-stained wretches at the Journal? It was Walter Scott, an enterprising printing pressman. Seems it took one to know one.