Woman enjoying life

Cigar smoking, cookie eating, happy as a lark woman, outside 84 Diner in Fishkill, NY. I wanted to go somewhere big and busy. Here it was, the diner I had passed a hundred times on my way to Newburgh, where the parking lot is always full and you get exactly what you expect in huge quantities, served by waitresses who weave through the tables and past each other at the double. A granny, with a tender hold on her grandchild's hand is given, with a reassuring smile, the right of way in this whirlwind traffic of nimble plate carriers, as the waitress stops dead to let her safely through.

Couple by street light

I'd like to know more about these two. Sometimes I'm only interested in the shape or expression of people I photograph. But with these two, I would like to know more, because she is dressed differently from him, more formally and with a bag and scarf, and he is in just a thin sweater. Also she spoke not a word to me, yet he was warm and forthcoming about having the picture taken, but as it was nearing eleven o'clock and they had not eaten, I could not keep them any longer. I had already dragged them out from their table that they had just settled into.

Surprise

You seldom know what people are talking about or feeling when you are observing them. Before I took this picture, I had been watching the couple and I thought from their expressions that they didn't know each other well. They were being polite and careful. After this show of aggressive surprise, I am not sure.

A choice too great

The menu has more than a hundred items on it. The tender touch from the left hand of a friend is calming. Going out means you do not have to shop, cook or wash up. But... you have to decide where to go, drive there, park and choose from a menu that is too large. It can be a strain, worse than eating in. An old school buddy of Caroline's, Scott Kelly, once told me that the best meal he'd ever eaten at a restaurant was at a provincial airport in France. The menu consisted of one hors d'oeuvres, one main course and one desert. The relief was so great that he sank into his chair, downed the house wine and left a happy man.

Escape from Techno

After our main course at Diner in Williamsburg I asked the waitress if we could have our desert at a table outside. She said that that would be fine. The food had been as good as anywhere in the city and the service probably better than anywhere in the city.

It was not the heat of the inside that made us want to move; the temperature was about right for a power saving minded proprietor. The trouble was the music — the Techno music. Not broadcast at the modest level of the thermostat but at a level that required one person wanting to tell their friend something important and confidential either to go outside into the street or text him or her on their phone.

Anyway, outside was heaven as our friend above also thought. The dessert was A1 and the bill most reasonable.

Solemn moment

More that Nikon shutters are as smooth as silk than my hand rock steady, but I believe that this photograph was taken at 1/5th of a second. Diner is a marvelous place where the waitress sits or crouches at your table and reels off the menu from memory and writes it at the same time on the paper tablecloth. Wine, (Julianénas out of a ten litre box, yes box, decanted into litre bottles) pasta and chocolate cake, out of this world. And a couple, heads together, her hand holding his ear. Why? Maybe just trying to concentrate on who owes what for the dinner.

Waitress in diner

This person is a waitress in the diner in Beacon, New York. She looks more like a customer about to give up waiting for her friend, but is not disgruntled enough to prevent good feelings towards the camera from coming through. There also is no sign of impatience in her look, as though she really had no more time for this nonsense as there were customers waiting for her to take their order. This was, of course, because she actually preferred being in front of the camera than dealing with customers.