In 1992, I worked the graveyard shift at Lou’s Diner off Route 9—the kind of place where truckers, insomniacs, and folks running from something stopped for coffee and pie. One night, a guy in a wrinkled suit slid into my booth, head in his hands. I brought him a slice of cherry pie, no charge. He didn’t eat it. Just stared at the plate and said, “My wife left me today.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I scribbled on a napkin: “Pie fixes nothing. But you’re not nothing.” I slid it across the table. He laughed—a wet, broken sound—then tucked the napkin into his pocket.
The next week, he came back. Bought two slices of pie and left a napkin note on the counter: “Thanks for seeing me.”
That’s how it started. Soon, others began leaving notes too—on napkins, receipts, sugar packets. A teenager hiding her pregnancy. A vet who hadn’t slept in years. A mom praying her kid would kick heroin. They’d tuck them under coffee cups or tape them to the jukebox. I kept them all in a shoebox under the register.
One regular, Martha, a retired nurse, started replying to the notes. She’d write back things like, “You’re braver than you think,” or “Tomorrow’s a new page.” She’d leave them in booth #4, where the loneliest folks always sat. Eventually, people began showing up just to read the notes. Booth #4 became “The Advice Booth.” No one knew who Martha was—just that her words felt like a hug.
Years later, after Lou’s closed, I found that shoebox while cleaning. Inside was a note I’d never seen. Martha had written: “I started this because my son took his life in 1987. I couldn’t save him. Maybe I can save someone else.”
Turns out, Martha died six months after Lou’s shut down. But her notes? They’re still out there. A trucker told me he keeps one taped to his dashboard: “The road gets lonely, but you’re never the only one driving it.”
Lou’s is a hardware store now. But sometimes, at 3 AM, I swear I can still smell burnt coffee and hear Martha’s laugh—sharp and warm, like she knew a secret the rest of us were still learning.