By Kevin Reed

They are the predecessor's of today's fast food chains, nothing formal, just simple meals at an honest price. A place where you can grab a booth or belly-up to the counter on one of the stools that fall in line alongside it. A place to just relax with a cup of joe, a place called the Diner.

They trace their origin all the way back to 1872, when a pushcart peddler named Walter Scott rigged a horsedrawn wagon with a stove, painted Walter Scott's Pioneer Lunch on the side of it, and went about the factory dietrict of Providence, Rhode Island selling boiled eggs, sandwiches, and coffee for a nickel. At that time, restaurants closed up shop at 8:00 pm, leaving late-shift factory workers to go home hungry after work. This made Scott's venture the only game in town and it quickly became a welcome sight and overnight success.

Ten years later, while standing in line on a freezing night waiting for his order, a customer named Sam Jones envisioned a lunch wagon big enough to seat patrons and provide shelter from the elements. Finally, after five years of saving, Jones hit the street with his one if a kind walk-in eatery.

By the early 1900s, the roads of New England became so overrun with mobile lunchwagons that city ordinances began limiting their service to the hours between dusk and dawn, but owners worked around this ruling by finding a prime location by the side of the road, ditching the wheels, hooking up to power, water, and gas and set up business in a permanent spot.

The term diner originated with Patrick J. Tierney, who dubbed his pre-fab restaurants "dining cars", later shortened to 'diners' by his Salesmen. Modern myth propagated the belief that diners were converted railroad cars, in reality, the streamlined locomotives of the '30s inspired manufactures to copy their long, sleek look.

By 1937, one million people ate at least one meal a day at a diner. In the 1940s, there were nearly 10,000 diners open for business.Today, sadly, fewer than 3,000 remain.

Diner lingo is known to everyone, used by employees as new ways to name meals and other culinary concoctions, it is a language unto it's own: "One on the city" ( a glass of water) "Make it moo" (coffee with milk) "Bird seed" (a bowl of cereal) "Cockleberries" (eggs) "Breath" (onions) "Frog sticks" (french fries) "Shivering Liz" ( Jell-o) "Bossy in a bowl" (beef stew) "Sweep the kitchen" (a plate of hash) "Skid grease" (butter)

Have an appetite for visiting a diner yourself? Check out 'Diner City' web site at Http://www.dinercity.com/ It's a great guide to finding diners throughout 20 states and features a photo archive and links to other related sites. Also, stop by 'The 'Roadside' at http://roadsidemagazine.com/ devoted to the appreciation and preservation of the diner.

And just how did that term 'Blue Plate Special' come about? During the Depression, a manufacturer started making plates with separate sections for each part of a meal - like a frozen dinner tray - it seems that for whatever reason they were only available in the color blue. Because they were inexpensive and saved on dishwashing, diners began using them for their low priced daily specials.

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Kevin Reed writes for Suite101.com and also works as a freelance writer.

This article previously appeared on the Suite101.com site and is reprinted with permission.