Pursuits : Elizabeth Thomsen

Last Tuesday I participated in a professional meeting at Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston, Massachusetts. It’s a beautiful place, and I enjoyed walking around outside during the breaks to take a few pictures of flowers and statues.

But after the meeting, I headed off on a quest to get the picture I really wanted, a shot of Chet’s Diner in nearby Northborough. I have been wanting to get this one for my collection, but I seldom seem to be in that part of the state.

It was closed when I arrived, but definitely worth the trip. I never know whether to be happy or sad that a diner is closed when I visit. I hate missing the opportunity to see the interior and experience the food (and especially the coffee) but I do find it easier to photograph the exterior without cars parked in front and people coming and going and making me feel uncomfortable.

Chet’s Diner is a bit unusual, an oversized diner, in the Worcester Lunch Car style but built onsite in 1931. I couldn’t really picture it from the photographs I have seen. It has a homely simplicity and truckerish quality that I found rather charming, especially the big CHET’S DINER painted across the front. I liked the neon outlining the roof, and especially the neon Chet’s sign in fancy red cursive.

I Google it when I got home and found a couple of interesting things:

• Chet’s Diner, Northborough MA — This is a brief (and probably unauthorized) video clip of the diner from Channel 5, WCVB-TV
• Chet’s Diner — But this was the real delight — the Framingham Views blog has several wonderful old photos of the diner, taken around 1940. They are smoky night shots, inside and out, that look like something straight out of an old movie — very cinema noir! Amazing.