Saying good-​bye to my biggest fan

Category: Tribute

Published on Friday, 18 May 2012 01:32

Written by Randy Garbin

My mom on the right standing with Bruce Balch, the former owner of one of my favorite diners ever, the Sunny Day in Lincoln, New Hampshire in 1998.My mother, Elaine Garbin, passed away on April 8^th of this year at the age of 82. I feel it appropriate to pay tribute to her here not because she ever owned or even worked in a diner, but because I think I can safely say we lost Roadside’s biggest fan.

Truth be told, my mother actually did her best to keep her family out of diners as we grew up. Though born in Palmer, Massachusetts, I didn’t step foot into the Day & Night Diner until my late twenties. As a child, I might glance quizzically at the little Worcester diner on Main Street, but I wouldn’t dream of opening the door. We didn’t have many diners in my area, but I avoided them all.

Though I don’t remember much about it, I have no doubt that I enjoyed my first visit to the Day & Night, because how could I not love a place run by Karl Williams? I’m sure I stepped inside and wondered what took me so long. A couple of years later when I finally got around to write a feature about Karl and his diner, I turned to my mother, who also grew up in Palmer and asked her if she ever stepped foot in the place when she grew up. The diner arrived in town about ten years after her birth, but she claims she never went, because, “Good girls didn’t go to diners.”

Requiem for Rosie’s

Category: Tribute

Published on Thursday, 10 May 2012 00:20

Written by Randy Garbin

The legacy of Rosie’s Diner teaches many lessons, both in and out of the grand world of diner operation. What happens next should not make anyone hopeful.

After we returned from our first trip to Diner Land, we produced this Issue 19 of Roadside Magazine The last time I had the pleasure of visiting with Jerry Berta, I found a man worn down like a president after two terms in office. On my previous visit in 2000, he still wore his trademark white horned rim glasses, and he still had energy and ebullience I saw when I first shook his hand in a Boston art gallery in 1990. By 2002, I almost didn’t recognize the guy. The man who brought Rosie’s Diner to Michigan had had enough. He wanted to go back to making art, not food.

Roadside issue #19, published after our 1995 trip out to Diner Land (or World) at its peak. I could almost bank on Jerry’s unbridled enthusiasm for all that he did, and his ability to render golden everything he touched. As the legend now goes, Jerry started out as an artist, sculpting clay into whimsical but recognizable icons of roadside Americana. During his youth in Flint, Michigan, he frequented Uncle Bob’s Diner, which became his in 1987. Jerry bought the diner to truck across the state to his eleven acres on 14 Mile Road in Rockford, setting it up as the Diner Store, his workshop and studio. At that time, the desolate location north of Grand Rapids was little more than a remote feeder to exit 101 on the US Route 131 expressway.

So many people stopped by the diner looking for something to eat, he figured it made sense to set up another diner to serve actual food. Jerry mounted a large neon sign that said “Diner Store,” but people only saw the word “Diner.” Why else would someone put a diner there if not to serve meals?

Jerry had a long string of successes in his career starting from the day he came home from his first art fair with over $2500 in cash, a sum that promptly silenced any further criticism from his previously disapproving father. How hard could this be?

The Kullman I knew

Category: Tribute

Published on Saturday, 10 December 2011 06:34

Written by Randy Garbin

During the last half of the 1990s and into the next century, I had the good fortune of working with Kullman Industries. Thanks to my experience publishing Roadside Magazine, the company hired me to design marketing materials, including their website and a few brochures. I also counted them as a major advertiser in the magazine.

Kullman was the first to build “retro” diners, and the Silver Diner seen here from Rockville, Maryland was the second such unit. The first called the American City Diner they installed not far away in D.C. proper. This Silver Diner is now closed and awaits demolition.

Remembering Kullman ephemerally

Category: Tribute

Published on Saturday, 10 December 2011 04:50

Written by Randy Garbin

From our modest collection of Kullman ephemera

Sam Kullman watches as an employee cuts the cake during the celebration of his company’s first anniversary in 1928.

The newswires announced today that the assets of what we once knew as Kullman Diners, Kullman Industries, and then Kullman Buildings will go up for auction, ending more than 80 years in the diner and modular building business.

Here, we present you with a few images we have in our collection.

Remembering Myles Henry

Category: Tribute

Published on Saturday, 25 December 2010 20:20

Written by Randy Garbin

Last month, we all heard the news about the death of Myles Henry, co-​owner of the Maine Diner in Wells, Maine. My tribute comes along a little later than much I’ve seen and heard from others and on the Net, but the news has weighed heavy on my mind since I received a call from Don Sawyer the artist that counted on Myles as one of his best customers and biggest fans.

I shared that with Don. When Myles jumped on the Roadside bandwagon back around 1993, he took up our cause as fiercely as anyone. Myles got it, and he bent over backwards to support our efforts, becoming Roadside’s biggest advertiser and one of the best customers for our merchandise, which he sold in his store. When I told people that “only the best diners advertised in Roadside,” I often had Myles and the Maine Diner in mind.