LIGONIER, Pennsylvania – All that remained of Ruthie's Diner on Jan. 21 was charred, ice-encased rubble – the aftermath of firefighters' desperate efforts to extinguish the blaze that ultimately consumed the modest eatery, which for more than 70 years had served locals and the travelers, anglers, and hunters heading east along the Lincoln Highway.
Several locals pulled into the parking lot and simply stared, at a loss for words as they watched a community mainstay reduced to charred ruins, thin smoke still rising from the ashes.
Ruthie's was the kind of place where everyone felt familiar, whether you'd been in last week, last month, or only when hunting and fishing season came around.
It was where my parents took me, and where I later took my children and grandchildren. For anyone who walked through those doors, it felt like home: comforting, unpretentious, and powerful in its simplicity.
It was the kind of place that served chicken-fried steak smothered in gravy, their version of peas and carrots succotash, and a pile of french fries unlike any other. Outside of the mile-high pies, it was the french fries that everyone loved.
Originally known as Burnsy's Diner in the 1950s and '60s, it was so rooted in the community that it even sponsored its own bowling team in the Ligonier Valley league and was famous for staying open 24 hours a day.
Every time I went, I met not just locals but hunters and anglers on their way to cabins, Pittsburgh families headed for the Flight 93 National Memorial or Idlewild, and neighbors gathering after Sunday services at one of the many churches that dot this Westmoreland County village.
Now Ruthie's joins that painful category of "used-to-be" places that linger in the memory long after they're gone. And this wasn't the familiar story of neglect or empty tables slowly choking the life out of a business, which does not make the loss hurt any less.
In bigger, more transient places, a loss like this barely registers. But here, the loss of Ruthie's lands like a gut punch, largely because the people who filled its booths weren't passing through; they were planted. Most Americans, for example, still live close to where they grew up. A U.S. Census Bureau study found that by age 26, nearly 60 percent live within 10 miles of their childhood home, and 80 percent within 100 miles.
That kind of rootedness rarely shows up in the way news is framed, which too often reflects the worldview of the rootless, the people who dominate the power structures of legacy media. They tend to live in the "super ZIP codes" of Washington, D.C., and New York, the centers of wealth and power, and their assumptions end up shaping the national story the rest of us are handed.
Why does that matter when it comes to Ruthie's? Because people who live unrooted lives, not always, but often, are less able to grasp what's really lost when a place like this disappears. This wasn't just the closing of a diner. It was the loss of a room that held whole chapters of life, dinners with grandparents who are gone now, late-night meals with high school friends, the familiar booth you could still return to instead of relegating all of it to memory.
Those attachments aren't sentimental clutter. They're part of emotional well-being. There's real power in being able to revisit the places that shaped you – and in being able to bring your children and grandchildren into them, so the story becomes something shared, not just remembered.
Ruthie's wasn't just stitched into the social fabric of this area; it was part of American roadside culture. It opened long before the Pennsylvania Turnpike existed, back when the Lincoln Highway carried travelers from one end of the state to the other, and sometimes from one end of the country to the other.
And it endured. It survived the turnpike siphoning away business as cars sped past the exit. It resisted the pull of homogenized chain-restaurant menus, and the even worse temptation of food fads, holding fast instead to the same personal touch through every shift in America's driving and dining habits.
The social cohesion that Ruthie's gave everyone who passed through her doors has left a void, one that tells the story of all of us, and serves as a reminder to hold on to, frequent and cherish the Ruthie's in your city or town.
Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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