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Red Arrow owner Carol Sheehan tells her story to the New Hampshire Business Journal (and tosses some props our way).

Q&A with: Red Arrow Diner owner Carol Sheehan

If you said Carol Sheehan, owner of Manchester's Red Arrow Diner, was a "daddy's girl," you'd be right -- and also very wrong.

In 1987, when she was in her early 20s, Sheehan embarked on a journey with her father George Lawrence and another business partner to buy the Red Arrow Diner, which had sat vacant for two years.

Running a restaurant, after all, was in her blood. Her family runs the Belmont Hall & Restaurant on Grove Street.

But it was her very own common sense, energetic spirit and careful attention that brought the Queen City landmark back to life.

Fast-forward to 2010, and you are just as likely to hear the Bedford resident on the radio with her talk show, "Food for Thought with the Taste Buds," with co-host Michelle Trumble, as you will see her in the Red Arrow corporate offices planning the business's expansion -- or slinging hash while meeting presidential candidates at the diner.

Yes, Sheehan still serves blue-plate specials (on blue plates) at the Red Arrow on occasion, calling it "a great way to get customer feedback."

And while Sheehan, 46, still asks her dad for his advice, she is definitely not afraid to blaze her own trail.

Q. You bought the diner in 1987. What prompted you to take on that project?

Read her answers here.

While driving behind the dirty windshield today, I started thinking about some expressions you just don’t hear anymore. Most of them are due to technology changing in the past twenty years or so. I thought I would write some of them down and feel free to add your own.

Actually, I just mentioned one, the term write, most people don’t write anymore, they blog, email, post, text or IM. It’s interesting how we still say type a note though and not word process one, I guess technically we are typing on the keyboard. I admit I miss the clickety-clack of an old-fashioned typewriter. There was something reassuring about hearing the ding at the end of the line, you felt like you were actually making progress on that term paper you waited until the last minute to type. Even the word computer isn’t used much anymore, instead we use the term laptop, desktop or notebook.