Start the Story: Where Do We Begin? 08/13/2009
Every story has a beginning. We invite you to write your 1-2 sentence beginning to the story depicted in the photo below!
Here’s mine: Maeve hated having her picture taken and being in the front for the diner’s employee photo was not how she wanted to start her shift.
What’s yours?
Okay, I’ll play! Here is mine:
The Big Dipper’s baker’s dozen is worth the trip on its own! And no, we’re not talking donuts, although we have them. Our 13 servers will pour your coffee, shake your malt or float your Coke™ 24 hours a day.
Kind of a fun exercise to get thoughts rolling this morning!
Shirley
Twitter: @writeword
It started out with what appeared to be an easy deal. Help take a picture of the wait staff and they’d give me free meals for two days.
Nobody had seen Ole’ Jesse for a while now, but finding his ring finger in my order of doughnuts and coffee I was none too pleased. The only thing for it was to call the sheriff, arrange a line up and begin to ask questions ….
The 13 women who staffed Big Dipper café smiled sweetly at the photographer. Unfortunately six of them would meet their fate at his hands.
I couldn’t stop staring at the photo, already tired from the work I knew lay ahead, still convinced the end would be worth it. All I knew so far was that one of these women was my real mother. I had to find out which one, and soon.
I absolutely love this idea! Here goes:
“Looking back at the photo, I can barely remember the names of the other women from the diner. You would think having spent an entire summer of long days working so closely, they would have made a permanent imprint on my mind. There are many memories from that time, but they all seem to be filled with anonymous characters.”
Ok so that’s 3, whoops :)
Maeve fidgeted with her apron, carefully wiping the sweat from her palms like a puppy licking the carpet of its bed. She knew she had to tell someone, she knew that this photo would be the last one she and the girls would ever take together.
Martha knew it wasn’t going to be a good day when the boss ordered all the girls to the counter for a photo. As the girls jostled to stand next to friends and far from enemies, she again felt alone, stationed at the head of the line.
“She looks so pretty, standing with all those lovely waitresses – we couldn’t bare to explain to her that she was a ‘he’,” explained Merle’s mother. “I think she fits in perfectly well, even if they placed her in the very back.”
yours made me laugh out loud – creative, very creative
The picture clearly shows the fire in her eyes, the tight lipped pout, proof of the angry passion she felt on the day I broke the news I had joined the army and was leaving to fight on Sunday. That’s the day I knew my gal loved me for sure.
Where’s Waldo?
Summoning the curiosity to turn over an old stray photograph of her mother was where it all began for Lila. The reverse, in tattered, needle-thin script read “Rosie. Don’t ever tell.”
I want more!
Is that a commision? :0)
From this exercise, I appear to be able to start some stories – I just need to find someone who’s good at finishing the flippin things, and I’m set :0)
Jusskiddin’ about Waldo. Here’s my go at the story:
While the girls always dreamed of leaving Main Street for Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, they just couldn’t manage to pool together the bus fare. That was when Lydia, always the creative one, came up with a better idea — forget Schwabs, we’ll get them to come right here at The Big Dipper.
Observing the customers and the staff, Sally suddenly realized that the diner would not be a good place to find a husband.
The pretty ones, with the curls and the frills and the rouge, got all the guys and the glory. But it was us — the “night shift Nancies,” they called us — who could dish the dirt on what went down after the school kids had gone to bed.
Marjorie was in no way pleased at being asked to stand at the end of the line. She began thinking of ways to sabotage the photo equipment and perhaps write a nasty letter to the editor.
Oo, Oo. Another one. Please let me do another one :0)
The way the Pixie Malts used to stick to your top lip – that was today’s main topic of discussion among the remaining Big Dipper girls – with only the four of us left now. As Daisy gleefully roll-called the faces in the weary old photo, we didn’t question as she skilfully by-passed the girl stood fourth from right – for none of us has had the courage to speak that name in a very, very long time, and none of us ever will.
Maeve realized she was the only one in the old photograph who was still alive. That made her the thirteenth–the unluckiest one of all.
Nya. Maybe one more. This is more fun than working :0)
How can this small square of seventy-year-old paper have caught so much of her spirit and soul – the shine on her face from the hotplate, the knowing way she used to carry her pinafore just one button too low and the place on her neck that always tasted of wild cherry soda? “Smile now honey!!!!” were the first words I ever gave her, and “Yeah? I’ll smile when you leave, Mister.” were the first words she gave me back.
Can’t stop now. Here’s another.
“My Emily – I swear you were sweeter than an apple picked from Vaughan’s orchard back then , you sure were.” Frank said out loud to nobody as he pawed at the frail photograph, trying to catch the escaping memories. Frank wasn’t his real name, and fittingly Emily wasn’t hers – but these were just two of many pretty, prickly little lies they told each other in their time.
The ‘Dipper – corner of Bridge and Main, Sackville, NJ – my momma’s first place of work – where she got her first kiss, first met my daddy and the last place she saw before she died. Sadly, it’s not a diner any more ~ although it still has all the original features ~ I insisted on that when I followed her last wish and bought it.
C’mon! Big smile. All together… WISHKY!
Margaret -We only sells milkshakes here, don’t we? -
Susan – Oh well! What a hell. –
Maria – I have to clean my glasses, I can not see anything-.
Rachel -The photographer is so cute-
Anne Marie – I am always the last one-
pisuPShhssus…. We have interrupted the mental broadcasting to communicate my computer hasn’t more ink.
When the manager told us that we all needed to gather at the counter, I was unexpectedly nervous, knowing that Gary had made no qualms about his dedicated efforts to keep us all a comfortable enough (for him anyway) distance from one another while we worked. When the officer walked in, my nerves screamed and my heart sank, allowing for tiny beads of perspiration to rush their way to the surface of my skin, and I knew that it was over…everything I had done, how far I had come to get this close to satisfying my revenge…it was all over with the ring of the bell over that diner door.
(okay, so I’m long winded…should’ve mentioned that earlier probably.)
I can recall on my first day at the café, old Hoffer (we used to call him Swanny – after the soap, ‘cause his shirts were always stained and all) made us line up for a photograph before opening and we were all mighty nervous (back then, if his hand wasn’t fingering the cash in the till, it was clamped on your behind, or worse). We all got drunk as skunks on the day he died ~ oh, I didn’t kill that fat old hog – but I sure played my part.
Looking back at all us girls working at The Big Dipper back then, I realized how young and innocent we were the day this photo was taken. The day after was a different story — and I’m still trying to figure out which one pulled the trigger.
You guys, rock!
It seems like it was only yesterday, that I spent the summer working at Aunt Peggy’s diner. I thought it was going to be the worst summer ever, but even sixty years later, I still call that summer, my “summer of love”.
Aunt Peggy was a tough woman, in those days you had to be. She didn’t take any crap out of anyone, and she sure as hell didn’t take any crap out of me. I was seventeen, and thought the whole world owed me a big favour; it didn’t, but I was a teenager, and a stupid one.
As I pulled down the camera lever on that long Oregon afternoon, I couldn’t look at their faces ~ only at the counter and at those squeaky old stools, partly amused, partly bemused by what had occurred, or more accurately – what I had perpetrated there. All thirteen of those faces had reasons to love me, hate me or kill me, and one look at the photograph will tell you that I’m neither particularly choosy or particularly moral ~ I take my comfort where I find it, and I let it bother me precisely none at all.
Okay I have one more, although I stand by my 1st entry. Here it goes:
One lousy case of food poisoning and the coppers make us girls pose in a line-up. None of us gals had it out for the Mayor but the Big Dipper had always held a grudge against the man who stole his wife.
When Candace Tallman disappeared, she left behind two things. One was a key to an unknown lock. The other was a photo from the Big Dipper Cafe.
Some of them gals are smilin’, cuz you see they know somethin’ you may not have put together quite yet – and that somethin’ is – that there’s actually two cardboard cutouts of women in that there photographic account.
Ok, here goes:
“After years of great service, the Big Dipper Cafe, was finally getting featured in a local newspaper. However, after it went to print, editors noticed that the former owner who had passed away mysteriously was somehow in the photo. The Big Dipper Cafe closed shortly thereafter.”
:)
First day jitters made it impossible for Myra to smile, and nearly got her fired before the end of her first day. But a few broken cups, mixed up orders and lousy tips wouldn’t keep her from fulfilling her dream of being the greatest waitress Austin had ever seen.
“When I told him I had twelve sisters, he said ‘prove it’ and I did,” Rose said. “He damn near fell off his chair.”
Just after the flash, one of the girls realized that someone would eat the poisoned sandwich. It did not matter to her. So she smiled. Twice.
The war made scarce many things. The rationing of peroxide revealed what usually wasn’t found out until the wedding night.
ROTF
You can see I’m smiling as I take my place with the other waitresses for our inaugural photograph at the Big D, ‘cause I can’t help but think of Maughtie, Sly and all the other hiders – and of the depth of the trouble they are no doubt in relative to my own. I used to look up at the pictures of the uniformed loved and missed folks on the shelf behind the counter and think “Sure – today I wear an apron, a corset and a wig and I go to the most painful of lengths to hide what needs hiding, but in a couple years when this is over, all you grinning fools will be dead in the ground, and I’ll be back in breeches”.
Opening day at the Big Dipper Café (24 hours and no less), Lafayett, 1943 ~ this is where yours and my paths will cross for the first of our four times. Oh you won’t find me in the photographer’s line-up ~ but I’m there none-the-less ~ or at least my image is, smiling from up above that old soda machine.
She’s there alright – plumb center of the photographer’s line-up, fronting bold-as-brass right up to that camera – when not ten minutes earlier she had killed in cold blood, and carefully separated one man’s oh so jealously guarded inheritance from the remnants of his twisted corpse. My challenge to you is not to judge, for you would have damn-near waved a flag and cheered had you heard what I’m about to tell you.
On that summer’s day in Sheridan – at the time that old photograph was taken – two things became clear as glass to me:~ one – that I would regret the very moment I laid my eyes on that whore, and every moment that followed ~ and two – my regret would continue and strengthen until such a time as I took her life or my own. As for the first, well that’s true enough – and for the second? Elspeth Harrison still lives, as do I – but a life was taken, in such a way as killed us both.
Sheridan, Bridge Street Diner ~ the best and worst of times, as the old story tells us.
“Every flower finds the sun eventually – it just takes a little time, Sweetie” is what she’s saying to me in this photograph ~ and she was damn right too ~ I found my sun in time. I crushed all in my way to get there and I gorged and sucked and soaked it’s rays until it burned ~ such a delicate little flower was I.
They had a helluva big waitstaff for such a tiny place. But that, as it turned out, wasn’t the strangest thing about the Big Dipper Cafe.
Of all us girls at the diner, Mildred always had to be the center of attention. She deserved what happened to her later that night; that cheap floral print dress was hideous.
:0)
The Big Dipper diner girls, they sure take some beating ~ all of them eager, wilful and willing, and with loved ones away, who would blame a certain sense of neglect or a need for attention? So was what I did such a crime, or was it a crime not to do?
Some things I should tell you before we continue:~ It has been put to me that I look youthful, but am in no way innocent ~ to say I break hearts for a living is too simplistic, it’s frequently more complex than that ~ oh, and my name is Rita, and I turn none away.
As I entered the diner, I was faced with 13 waitresses behind the counter, all posing in a single line for a photograph – except when the photographer left, it became clear that they weren’t posing, they were always like this.
Five of them served me my coffee (I gave the tip to the biggest one) and 12 hours later (I drink a LOT of coffee) their shift ended and 13 more waitresses came to take their place.
We all were very close friend. Like the number of us in the old photo, we worked, played together and laughed like a baker’s dozen.
Oops, typos. Let me revise as follows:
We were the closest of friends back then. Like the number of us in the old photo, we worked, played and laughed like a baker’s dozen.
One week ago today it happened ~ so domestic and trivial really ~ someone’s cat, our dog, a scratch, a push, one scream, a slip and a crash as it fell ~ and then some sadness as the beautifully framed old photograph, given to me by the sweet old lady in Yamhill, lay in pieces on the hearth.
New frame and glass, and no harm done ~ except I don’t know which is most faulty ~ my eyes or my mind ~ because I swear to you when she gave it to me ~ before the glass smashed ~ there were fourteen faces (no more no less) ~ I’m telling you I counted fourteen in that line, and the face that’s now missing is hers.
One was chosen. One to die for
Agreed
He had no real preference for a certain type of woman – neither old nor young, neither thin nor plump: all that mattered was how she looked in the waitress uniform and how well she could serve him. The minute they saw him enter they assumed their line-up positions hoping to be selected.