The Diner - Menu

Diner Days
[photo] "It ain't fancy, but it's food," said a student long ago. Diners of yesteryear kept food in students' bellies and some change in their pockets."

Many of us who predate the McDonald's generation retain a fondness for the uniquely American institution known as "the diner." Its menu and clientele placed it somewhere between the hot dog stand and the Howard Johnson-type "family restaurant": a cut above the greasy spoon with a reassuring sparkle and a tolerant outlook.

The American diner has been enjoying a renaissance. A public television show near the end of 1993 focused on notable Pennsylvania diners. A local diner, Baby's Burgers and Shakes, recently starred in a national radio ad for the Visa Card. And Richard Gutman has just reissued his classic 1979 illustrated history, American Diners.

Many Penn Staters remember State College diners warmly, but for those cloudy memories, I'll drop a few names: the Club, the NCD, the New Park, the Penn State, the Electric, the Greeley, the Turf Club, the Empire. Interested? Read on.

The era of the diner in State College began in 1926 when the Club Diner opened at 110 East College. Here, under manager Jack Kellogg, Rufus Rockey (Boots) Ripka began his long career in local food service as a fifteen-year-old dishwasher, moving steadily up to grill cook to unit manager. The Club belonged to a three-diner chain, the others in the larger towns of Williamsport and Lewistown.

"I worked hard," Boots recalls. "I ate breakfast at seven, lunch after one, and I never got supper until after seven. You could buy a hot dog for a nickel and a hamburger for a dime. We called all our orders - never wrote them down, never made a mistake. We'd just yell, 'PIGS AND BLANKETS?'"

While Boots Ripka toiled at the Club Diner, Russ Admitz, originally form Grassflat near Kylertown, pulled a diner onto the East Beaver lot northeast of what is now Schlow Library. Russ named his restaurant the College Diner, and from 1930 on it flourished under his management. The land where Russ camped belonged then to Gene Lederer, State College's mayor from 1929 to 1933 Lederer's son Gene, 42, remembers Russ's diner well:

"My father had an office down on College, and he wanted to move up onto Beaver into the old Delta Tau Delta house. One night, Russ just hitched up his diner, pulled it down to College, and parked in the narrow slip next to the First National (then Central counties, now Mellon) bank. In effect, they played musical chairs."

Local developer Sidney Friedman, 42, also remembers Adamitz: "Russ and I were business partners for thirty years - right up until he died, really. You know how tough it is to stay partners and friends that long? Russ Adamitz was a quiet philanthropist. He did a lot of good for this town without asking for credit."

Like so many other diners, the College underwent renovations to embellish its modest facade, and shortly after Adamitz changed locations, it became the "New" College Diner, or simply the NCD. A Penn State student in the early 1950's, and now a local food service and recreation businessman, Ken Kulp recalls the NCD this way:

"I remember their great meal tickets -- $5.00 for $5.50 worth of food. I could eat for two weeks on a ticket: a plate of spaghetti, a salad, garlic bread, and milk for $.59; a pork-chop-sauerkraut-mashed- potato dinner for $.79. I ate all my meals there."

Russ Adamitz's success correlated with the long hours he spent on the site, usually at the cash register. It was a lesson Boots Ripka was also learning, first at the Club Diner and later at Greeley's Diner, which moved in near the Beaver Avenue address the College Diner had just vacated. Open for about a decade, the Greeley is lost to much of State College memory. But Ruth Houston a local waitress for fifty-seven years, does recall it:

"I came here in 1936, and I know it was there then. It's where I had myself a little romance. I was already working at the Allen Crest Tea Room, and after a movie, we'd go up to the diner. I can't remember its name, but it was on East Beaver."

Boots Ripka also remembers the Greeley: "I left the Club and went to work up there for Morris Fromm who owned the diner and a shoe store nearby. Later, Morris wanted to back me as the manager of a new diner. We even went to New Jersey to look at the factory models."

"But when Russ heard Morris wanted to buy me a diner, he offered me $7,000 to manage the old Club - which he renamed Boots' Diner. Then in 1941, Russ pulled it up from College Avenue (near the old "A" Store, now Moyer Jewelers) and set it up on South Atherton where Centre Film Lab is now. Hubert Haugh Sr. owned the land. We renamed it the Electric Diner because it was the first all-electric restaurant in town."

Adamitz soon sold the Electric Diner to an investor named Hershberger form Indiana. But just before his death, Hubert Haugh willed Boots the plot. Away at war, Hershberger fell into his manager's debt, a situation that by 1944 left Boots the sole owner and proprietor. In 1965, his diner made way for the camera shop and Boots moved across the street into the "Dairyette" that has become a State College landmark.

From a strictly commercial standpoint, meanwhile, the most remarkable example of competition in town might be the forty-year coexistence of the New College Diner (at 126 West College) and the Penn State Diner ( at 130 West College) - the former lodged lengthwise in its bank-side alley, the latter displayed full-front along the sidewalk (now the Bakery).

The Penn State Diner appears to have opened in 1933 under the auspices of the Magill family. Then in 1946, a three-generation diner family, the Hennings (who already owned diners in Huntingdon and in their hometown of Butler), moved into State College and took over soon after Bill Henning Sr. returned from B-27s in the war.

The neighbors often cooperated and both prospered - their respective workers moving back and forth, their customers often switching off. The Penn State Engineers would come across the street for the best coffee in town (either place, it didn't matter) and an Eric Walker might find himself on a stool next to someone sobering up the morning after. Bill Henning Jr. remembers going to work for his father at the Penn State Diner in 1962 at the age of twelve:

"To reach the dish machine, I had to stand on a pair of milk crates. He paid me a dollar an hour. One day he dropped me to $.50. He said if I didn't like it, I could find another job. So I did."

However it was also in 1962 that an auto crash near Potters Mills disabled Bill Sr. The family tried to keep the diner going, but finally succumbed to debt and stress in 1965. It wasn't until 1973, when Russ Adamitz retired from the NCD, that the Hennings purchased Russ's operation and revived the name. For the next seven years, the NCD became the Penn State Diner.

"We sure confused the alums," Bill Henning Chuckles. But Bill was about to inherit the mixed blessing of a sole proprietorship. Bill Sr. died in 1977, and at the age of twenty-seven, Bill Jr. took over:

"The help would drive you crazy. The never realized I had to pay for all those food deliveries. They seemed to know nothing about purveyors or cost control. The grill cooks would come and go. I learned to cook myself in one day, by necessity. I ran three shifts: morning and night with local people and a three-to-nine shift with students."

But the debts mounted and by August of 1980, Bill Henning and his attorney, Ben Novak '65, were looking for a buyer, CDT headlines ("Diner Closing Ends an Era") were hyperbolic and premature, and Henning remembers the episode with some bitterness:

"It was as though I'd sold Old Main - closing the 'Home of the Grilled Sticky.'" But Daniel Barbet, who had apprenticed as coowner of La Chaumiere up at 210 West College (now Cafe 210), quickly bought the Penn State Diner (the New College Diner) and reopened it as Ye Olde College Diner. In 1987, Barbet sold to the joint ownership of Dan Rallis and Dan Pivirotto, 78, the current operators.

In the mid-1950s, two diners appeared along the increasingly busy North Atherton Street and Benner Pike. Both associated themselves with open-air movie theaters - drive-ins. Out Benner Pike, Pete Persia managed what Boots Ripka calls "a stainless-steel beauty," the Turf Club. Dominic Persia, Pete's brother, can't quite pinpoint the year it opened, but Ken Kelp remembers eating there occasionally before a movie:

"We had our dinner and would take our son on into the movie. I can date to 1957 or '58 because he was still a baby and he slept in a hammock contraption we strung across the back seat."

The Turf Club remained in its place outside the Star-Lite Theater until 1988, but the Persia's had long consigned it to scrap Skip Stewart. It stood for several years up on railroad ties, desolate on the landscape until Terra Excavating disassembled it and hauled it to McElhattan to await renovation and a promised new life in Lock Haven.

Also, out along North Atherton Carl Temple had built an incipient strip mall flanking his drive-in. In 1956, he bought an Empire diner (the name of the manufacturer) standing next to the Capitol Building in Harrisburg. Temple kept the name and his Empire Diner remained in place until 1991, though in its last couple years, it served as a Brothers Pizza store.

As Ed Temple '70 says, "We knew all about the value of old diners by this time, but ours had been gutted and was really worthless, so we demolished it. But if you'd like to see its exact twin, watch closely in the movie Home Alone II and, in some of the background scenes, you'll see it."

Only one State College diner now trades on its origins. Baby's Burgers and Shakes at 131 South Garner arrived in town by truck in 1950. The name of its first owner eludes my informants, but the sleek model built in 1949 first operated as New Park Diner. By 1966, it had passed to Theodore Cocolin, who capitalized on a trend toward southern food, called it the Char Pit, and began to serve Kentucky Fried Chicken. The diner then accommodated a Weiner King, then a Pedro's, and then in 1987, an investor group including local accountant C.J. Wagner, 80, purchased the building and turned it into the 1950s theme restaurant (a diner theme within a diner!) that operates there now.

Baby's proves that nostalgia sells - both burgers and Visa Cards. But if you're terminally nostalgic, you can always walk uptown to 126 West College and crawl under the foundation of Ye Old College Diner. Bill Henning promises you'll find the axles of Russ Adamitz's 1930 College Diner still in place.

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