Whenever you are traveling I-81 near Natural Bridge, Va., there is this great slice of Americana called the Pink Cadillac Diner. It’s the first thing you see coming off the exit is a pink 1956 Cadillac Fleetwood sitting under the sign for the Pink Cadillac Diner and the Budget Inn. At first, my confidence in the Pink Cadillac Diner wasn’t real high as we pulled into the uneven gravel parking lot. While I was locking up the RV, Chris and Service Dog Charlie went in to check it out. Chris peeked out and gave the thumbs up, so I went on in. The hostess, dressed in a T shirt and jeans, questioned about letting Charlie in—”he’s a “service” dog, you know. OK, no problem.” And then our 1950s adventure began.
Stepping into the Pink Cadillac was like entering a time tunnel and arriving back in the 1950s. Vinyl green and white tiles in one area, black and white in another, and there was a separate room where people could buy old time ice cream by the scoop. We were seated at a classic 1950’s style chrome table with a vinyl table cloth in matching chrome seats. We were surrounded with artifacts from an era gone by. The walls are lined with posters and pictures of the past. Movie posters of the great stars of the silver screen decorate the walls above the black and white tile floors and old-fashioned diner-style vinyl booths. There were John Wayne movie posters and pictures of Elvis and other movie stars hanging on the walls.
A grand 1950s juke box that still played the songs was along another wall. A Texaco Fire Chief gas pump sat near our table, with that 23 cents a gallon price showing, I was longing for the days when I could trust my car to the man who wears the star! Chris got a chef’s salad and I had a spicey chiliburger with jalapeños and fries. Huge burger, cooked well. Great fries. The food was wonderful. The service down home with a sense of family and belonging. Just looking at the Pink Cadillac from the outside, we would have not normally chosen to eat there. The very first time we dined there, we had been in stop and go traffic for over and hour because of a terrible accident. We were tired, grumpy and hungry.
But as is written in the Psalms, the Lord “satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” The Lord was certainly smiling on us when we found the Pink Cadillac that day. We were longing for some vittles. We were likely close to the definition of “hangry.” We were in no mood for nonsense. The Pink Cadillac satisfied our longing souls! Down home service with down home people who dished out down home hospitality with down home diner food. Plus, it was only about a mile from the KOA where we had booked a campsite. Come to find out much later, the Pink Cadillac Diner is listed as one of the top 50 diners in America by Readers Digest.
