Once during my years as a reporter in Springfield, a trucker deliberately drove his rig off Route 91 and down an embankment rather than crash into a small car that had suddenly slowed down in front of him (he landed unhurt at the foot of the embankment). Since then I’ve had a little case of hero worship where truckers are concerned, and now and then I like to eat what they eat.
That’s why I’m partial to the Whately Diner, aka the Whately Truck Stop, aka the Fillin’ Station. I like the incandescent look of the place after dark. I like the line of 18-wheelers that always faces it across the parking lot. I like the fact that it’s strategically located by Route 5 between on-offs for Route 91. I like the fact that it has showers for the truckers, and the way it spans eras by keeping juke boxes by the booths while now offering wifi in the parking lot.
I like the fact that it has its own lore—about the time a scene from In Dreams, with Annette Bening and Robert Downey, Jr., was shot there. About the fact that Jason Robards is said to have eaten there when his child was in school a few miles away. About visits by Ernest Borgnine and B.B. King.
Once it was even rumored that a single woman of middle age who knew a friend of a friend of mine went there to eat and took a trucker home for a little midday romance. They parted never to meet again, but according to unverifiable reports, she had an outstanding time.
And at this eloquently chromed eatery, the food is pretty good, too.
On two recent visits here, my husband and I got prompt, considerate service and food that hit the spot, as well as being cheaply priced and served up fast. I can recommend the grilled steak salad ($7.99), which was very satisfactory when I had it for dinner. The meat was tasty and tender, not greasy and heavy, and the vegetables were crisp and fresh.
More recently I had a small order of spaghetti and meatballs (also $7.99), which was good standard stuff with quite a vivacious sauce. The salad was not imaginative—who goes to a truckstop for an imaginative salad?—but the lettuce was sprightly and green, the tomatoes were flavorful and the salad was cool without being cold the way a salad is when it’s just been unceremoniously jerked out of a refrigerator.
The menu here doesn’t have a lot of surprises, but it’s not only truckers from Mississippi who may be glad to get grits, a dish that’s not unknown but not exactly common in these parts. Breakfast dishes, of course, are mainstays, and they’re geared to 18-wheeler appetites.
If your system can handle a 12-ounce steak with two eggs, toast and home fries, you can get it here for $11.99. You can get the four-egg Monster Omelet, or, if you want elegance, you can go for the eggs Benedict. If you want to take pity on your heart and arteries, a simple bowl of oatmeal is also available. In fact, it’s actually possible to get enough protein here to keep body and soul together for less than $2 by getting an order of Texas toast for $1.29 and having some peanut butter smeared on it for an additional 39 cents.
Nobody ever said the Whately Diner was out to steal customers from its landmark competitors like Miss Flo’s or the Blue Bonnet. But this truckers’ mecca is a fixture in the upper Valley, partly because it’s open 24/7 (including holidays) and offers grub in the wee hours, not only to truck drivers but to students pulling all-nighters and others who, for whatever reason, just can’t sleep or are subject to cravings for scrambled eggs at three in the morning (check out special prices on eggs and burgers between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.). There’s a universal need for such havens, as Hemingway taught us in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and there’s a long-distance hauler in all of us.
