Drivin' on 20

From That Same Old Guy:

As regular readers of this blog know, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to places I want to explore. My recall for other things, alas, isn't all that great.

Anyway, several years ago, traveling from my home in Newton, Mass., to a Thanksgiving celebration in Connecticut, I ended up driving on Route 20, rather than the Mass. Pike, because the traffic was (marginally) better. As I drove along what is the longest road in the United States -- stretching from Boston's Kenmore Square to Newport, Oregon -- I was spotting backside destinations left and right. "Man," I thought, "I need to check this out for the blog someday."

Well, that day came recently, as I made the decision to once again bypass the Pike in favor of Route 20, this time traveling west to east on a trip home from visiting my mother in the Nutmeg State. Doing a tiny bit of Google Maps research ahead of time, I had only one destination I wanted to hit: the Yankee Diner in Charlton. After that, I just winged it, racing against the fading sun as I drove east. I found a slew of abandoned properties and another diner, this one run by the daughter of a local sports legend.

Sharing a parking lot with a shuttered tattoo shop and located across the street from an abandoned factory/warehouse complex, the Yankee Diner has been in this location since 1969. It's "a 1939 Worcester (#735)," according to the Roadside Architecture blog's Massachusetts diner page. "It was originally installed in Leominster, MA."

This place is neat and tidy on the outside, so I'm guessing the inside follows. There is a takeout window, too, which detracts from the front-view aesthetics, but is obviously necessary to keep the place in business. The diner is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but is open the remaining five days of the week, including for dinner Thursdays and Fridays.

Just west of the Yankee, on the north side of Route 20, is an abandoned building that I'm guessing was a service station at some point.

I've been unable to find out any information about this place.

Just up the hill from that pile of ruins is a place once known as Charlton Mills.

LoopNet, which lists commercial properties for sale or lease, indicates this building dates to 1902, and was once known as the Charlton Box Factory. It was at one time, perhaps originally, known as the Charlton Woolen Mill.

From 1990 to 2010, this complex was home to Charlton Mills, a "craft emporium full of hard-to-find items" that also specialized in making boxes of all sizes, as well as wrapping materials, according to this Telegram & Gazette story from May 2010. Charlton mills owner John Carpenter started the business inside the former Independent Box Makers of New England, Inc., facility and within a few years took over the entire first floor, according to the article.

This place was also a UHaul facility at some point. I assume it will get torn down eventually. I hope I'm wrong.

I drove 16 miles -- past CrossFit facilities and stove shops and Walmarts and newer restaurants and car dealerships and Home Depots and gas stations and fast-food joints and weed shops and probably stuff that when I return some day I will deem important to the Backside of America -- before I found my next quarry.

I was heading east, and the sign is on the westbound side, so I had to turn around. As I pulled into the lot, next to Gracar Auto Center Repair & Towing, I said to myself, "Where the heck is the diner?" I even pulled out of the lot and drove about 200 yards down a side street. "There's no diner down here," I said. As I drove away, heading east again, I saw a slab and realized that the diner had been moved.

From the Roadside Architecture blog: "The Edgemere Diner is a Fodero [Dining Car] from 1940. It had been here since 1954. It was previously located in the Boston area where it was known as the Englewood Diner. The diner was sold to the city [of Shrewsbury] in 1995 and closed in 2005. It reopened in 2008 as 'The Edge' which focused on hot dogs rather than normal diner fare. In 2014, new owners reopened it as a diner again. The name, Edgemere Diner, was also back."

In November 2021, Michael Cioffi was the winning bidder in an auction for the diner. In May of this year, Cioffi loaded the diner onto a flatbed truck and hauled it to somewhere in New York.

I'm glad to see it will be saved.

Further along on Route 20 in Shrewsbury, I did a double-take when I saw the statue below.

Once again, I had to bang a uey and check out the former Tanela Restaurant & Lounge.

"For a number of years during the mid-1970s, the Tanela Restaurant was a fairly popular location for local people to get some Polynesian cuisine," per the MyTiki Life web site. "The Tanela was known for its large Moai statue and Polynesian-themed décor on the outside of the building. The business added several motel-like apartments at the rear of the property, but soon fell on hard times, the restaurant closing down, but the motel units remaining in operation.

"During the early 2000s, an attempt was made to revive the location, and it re-opened as a heavy metal-type venue called 'Trance Buddha.' That didn’t work out either, and soon closed. Within a few more years, the apartments were closed."

Man, I bet both Tanela and Trance Buddha were quite the scenes during their heydays.

A friend who grew up in Shrewsbury recalls that this place was also once known as the Honolulu.

The vacant apartment building is still attached to the old restaurant. I have to say, I find adding "motel-like apartments" an odd real estate decision.

The final stop on this tour was Northborough's Chet's Diner, which opened in 1931 (!).

"Chet’s Diner is #177 from the Worcester Lunch Car Company," according to this Patch article. "These lunch cars were hand-built at the factory, then transported to their sites with a large truck. Diner #177 was shipped in two pieces and assembled on-site because of its extra length."

Check out the video below from 2012 to get a feel for the place. Notice that the chef/owner contradicts the information from the Patch article cited above about the diner being delivered. She says, "1931, built on location" to the question of how long the diner has been along Route 20.

Oh, and that chef/owner's name? Jessica Fidrych. That surname ring a bell? She's the daughter of former Detroit Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych, who grew up in Northborough and was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1976. Known for his eccentric personality while on the mound -- talking to himself, talking to the ball and "throw[ing] back balls that 'had hits in them,'" per Wikipedia -- Fidrych was nicknamed "The Bird" by a minor league coach who thought he resembled Big Bird from "Sesame Street."

After his stellar rookie season, unfortunately, Fidrych suffered a series of injuries and pitched his last professional game in October 1980. After retiring, he and his wife and daughter lived on a farm in Northborough. He died in 2009 after an accident on the farm, at age 54.

Jessica Fidrych's grandmother, Nancy Pantazis, acquired the diner in 1964. So cool that the same family has run this place for decades.

I hope to travel this route again in order to make photos of places I simply didn't have time to explore.

Below is an Ed's Redeeming Qualities video that inspired the title of this post.