The Worcester Lunch Car Company
By Richard J. S. Gutman
This slim volume from Arcadia’s Images of America series is a collection of old photographs, advertisements, articles, menus, matchbooks and other documents and memorabilia about The Worcester Lunch Car Company and some of the 651 diners they made during 55 years in business. Gutman, who is the author of American Diner Then and Now, interviewed some of the key personnel from the diner manufacturer before they died, and had access to the company archives preserved at the Worcester Historical Society, as well as his own collection of photographs from decades of road trips and research.
There’s an introduction and each chapter opens with a page of text, but the book is mostly a scrapbook of images, with meticulous descriptive captions to provide context. There are some fascinating photographs of diners under construction at the factory and diners being moved to their new locations, and there are pictures of diner people as well — factory employees, owners, cooks and customers.
My favorite page in the book shows one of artist John Baeder’s paintings of the late great Worcester diner, “Alice and the Hat.” I used to pass this all the time on the bus, and the name intrigued me. “Alice” I could certainly picture, but who or what was “the Hat”? The front of the diner shows the hat, one of those hats men are always wearing in old movies from the thirties and forties. Eventually I learned that Alice and the Hat were a couple — she ran the diner, and he was a sportswriter for the Worcester Telegram whose nickname was the Hat. I loved thinking about Alice and the Hat, and all the tales that must have been told in that diner! This book has an old photograph of the interior of Alice and the Hat, showing the Hat himself sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee and one of his newspaper pals. He doesn’t quite look the way I pictured him, which was as William Powell, but it’s still great to have this glimpse into the past. Sadly, the Alice and the Hat diner was bricked over and turned into a real estate office.
I am really enjoying this unique collection of diner images, and just wish I could see more!
Link
- Diners: Still Cookin’ in the 21st Century — “An exhibit of diner history from the collection of Richard J. S. Gutman” at the Culinary Archive and Museum at Johnson and Wales University, Providence, Rhode Island, through June, 2008.
