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Single Female Seeks…Good Used Car

Category: Ramblings

Published on Friday, 05 February 2010 05:00

Written by Teri Dunn Chace

The car of a girlfriend of mine recently died, or rather, as is so often the case, it required yet another costly repair that ultimately is not worth it. Time to go car-​shopping. Due to her limited budget, and hoving to the Car Talk guys’ sage advice, she wants to get a used car, in decent condition, with not too many miles on it. We were talking about this because I have bought several used cars over the years. So I said to her: good luck, honey!

Car-​shopping is a challenge, to be sure. It is a big purchase for most everybody, undertaken with some trepidation, some concern about not getting a lemon or buying somebody else’s money pit, some anxiety about getting into debt (many of us cannot buy a car with cash, outright), and maybe a dash of excitement or anticipation (gawd, how nice it will be to get behind the wheel, turn a key, and have the dang thing reliably start up!).

“She takes care of me.“

Category: Ramblings

Published on Monday, 14 December 2009 05:00

Written by Teri Dunn Chace

Many long years ago, Roadside Magazine ran an a photo essay cleverly entitled “Boy Meets Grill,” celebrating the guy at our local diner or coffee shop who flips pancakes, turns out meltingly crisp home fries, and knows how to do when it comes to eggs “sunny side up” and “over easy.” But what about the ladies who make our visits so comforting and memorable? A marvelous book has just been published, Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress, by Candacy Taylor. It is marvelous because it is a book of integrity and insight. You should buy it immediately (order it through your local bookshop — the publisher is Cornell University Press — or grab it via amazon​.com), definitely for holiday gifts, and/​or alert Santa.

A quick thumb-​through reveals a bounty of terrific photographs, portraits of the waitresses at work, at a counter or beside a booth, with favorite customers; enticing shots of pie being served and coffee being poured, etc. There is something candid and compassionate, but not patronizing, about these images — Taylor has a knack for respectfully capturing the real. Those of us who try to take good photos in such places would do well to study her success here.

However, though handsomely produced, this is not a coffee-​table book, not really. Read it! A former waitress herself, Taylor undertook this project to interview and understand the older American waitress after a long night: “On that Friday night I thought to myself, if we are this tired, how do waitresses twice our age (I was in my early 30s at the time) do this, and how do they feel about their jobs? Do they have dreams they have never realized? Are they worn out from the physical and mental demands of the job?…The questions kept coming.” With camera, tape recorder, laptop, and an open mind (there are so many clichés!), Taylor set out to learn about career waitresses, or “lifers,” as they sometimes wryly, or proudly, call themselves.