July's Post

Staying with the western most Finger Lakes region, I was considering either Dansville or Le Roy for my focus. To tie in to last month's post, I will go with more Le Roy info.
When newspapers mention diners, or "lunch cars" out in the middle of nowhere, and don't go in depth, it has you wondering if they are authentic diners or not. You know there had to be a few diners out at isolated country locations, sometimes near a gas station and sometimes not. So many "diner" names need not be mentioned because there is absolutely no evidence to them being authentic diners.
One of these that has me go back and forth is this May 1940 blurb, "Ralph Zingaro will soon have his new lunch car at Buck Run Gully ready for business." Every other mention of this business calls it a diner. With this diner, it is going to take a photograph to tell whether or not this is an authentic diner or not.
Mr. Bertha Stoner got mentioned in both the Dansville Breeze and the Caledonia Advertiser with her "Grove Diner" The diner was located on the highway to Batavia at a truck stop, tourist camp, cabis, showers and a bunkhouse for truck drivers, and was a honest to goodness Rochester Grills! Later the diner became known as the Bertha Stoner Diner "At the Grove."
The last advertisement I have found for this diner is 1938. Who knows how long it lasted, but one would have to imagine that the Interstate in the 1950s was probably the beginning of the end, if it was still around.
With a postcard shown to me by Art Goody, this makes two Rochester Grills I have been able to identify this past year. Art Goody, postcard collector, showed me a postcard of Lane's Diner in Rochester, NY.