Classic Diner?

It seems extraordinarily empty for a Saturday afternoon, and this at first gives me some second thoughts about my choice of field site. A platinum blonde waitress with a disinterested smile seats us at a table in the middle of the left-hand wing of the restaurant at a fair-sized yellow card table. We squeeze ourselves into the seats, grabbing another chair from a table nearby, which causes one of the waiters leaning against the register counter to raise an eyebrow.

To our left in a booth are two elderly couples sitting together. The one who speaks the loudest, a short woman with an infectious smile and a stunning white coif, regularly presses her fingers together when she talks. When something makes her laugh particularly hard, she slaps the table with  hand full of large rings, which makes her friends laugh harder. Her husband sits angled towards her with his arm around her, watching her fondly. He wears a green marshmallow-style vest and a gray sweater, something that strikes us as unusual, given the 80-degree weather outside.

When their waiter, a young Asian woman with a sternly-pulled back ponytail, approaches them, the four look up with guilty grins on their faces.

The woman I noticed earlier, whom I've christened "Red" for her beaded crimson blouse, looks up at her with bright smile.

"Were we being too loud, dear? I'm very sorry."

The waitress smiles warmly and shakes her head. "You're fine," she reassures them. "You sound like you're having a lot of fun over here," she teases, taking out her notepad.

This raises some more laughter from the four at the table. The thin and matronly woman with the blue windbreaker reaches for her wallet, a beaded indigo affair, and wags it at Red.

"Now, Bob and I have got this, so don't you try to pull on us what you did in Vegas!"

Red and her husband chuckle and clasp hands. "We'll be good!" Red says, winking at the waitress, who laughs.

After the waitress takes their order, Red glances over at her husband and gestures for her purse, whose vest and apparent habit of paying for lunch has named him Green. Green hands her a purple purse with a beaded strap, from which she draws a white MyPhone. She squints at the screen, lifting her glasses to set them on her head.

"Look at this, Blue," she says, leaning over the table to show the woman in the blue windbreaker. "Our grandson just finished his science fair project. He made it in Green's shop."

The four of them smile and chuckle over the boy in the photo. The phone is quickly put away in Red's purse, and stories begin.

I glance over at my table companions, who are all on their phones, barely speaking to each other. I look back at the table with the two elderly couples, puzzled that the previous generation at the next table seems to have figured out when technology is really for before ours has.