The Captain’s Table

1980

I can see in by looking out into the night.

This florescent lit diner is mirrored in the window by the darkness. The scalloped stainless steel panels and railroad car shape are classic. No Greek-deco artifice, no brick-face interior, real stainless steel and real formica and real naugahyde booths. Restaurants are where people dine; diners are where people eat. And so I eat. Tonight's special is handwritten on an index card paper clipped to the menu. Pot roast, sweet potato w/red cabbage.

Come from Route 3 and the bends go 90 left and 90 right as Ridge becomes Kingsland becomes Schulyer Avenue. Right there, framed by the massive industrial complex and chemical tanks behind, sits tiny Schulyer Diner, one of life's classrooms. In these booths I learned more about the environment than I can tell. From these coffee pots poured my schooling.

We're in the borderlands, the highland on the Meadowland's western edge, where little houses on short streets dead end to fences that keep you from the drop. Where the bowling alley is opposite the cemetery and flower shops do not cater to lovers. Where factories back up to rail spurs and all order is lost. Drive south along Schuyler and gaps provide glimpses out onto vast mudflats and landfills, with transmission lines held in the upstretched hands of spindly monsters tethered to power plants.

Here copper was found by Arent Schuyler and so began what some believe to be the first copper mine in North America, with a steam engine imported from England. But the enduring legacy of Captain Schuyler, at least to me, is that diner.

Time for some pie.