A '50s dream at this Tyngsborough diner - Boston Globe
TYNGSBOROUGH — Marybeth Shanahan, owner of the Dream Diner, waits on tables and greets customers. And on Saturdays between May and September, she hosts an event straight out of the carhop era. The diner doesn’t pretend to compete with the restaurant chain Sonic or smaller carhop establishments that dot the New England landscape. Patrons who pull into the parking lot in spotless Chevys or antique Fords could easily imagine a server running to take an order. But the Dream Diner offers the experience without crumbs on the seat or a sticky door handle. “These cars are so nice they don’t want to eat in them,” Shanahan said. On carhop Saturday, the diner opens at 7 a. m. , two hours before the antique cars begin crawling into reserved spaces and a father-and-son deejay team cranks up the tunes. Inside, the booths and counter seats begin to fill, and a waiting line forms a little past 9. Shanahan, who grew up in Lowell and Dracut, was 26 years old and working as a general contractor in 1997 when she heard that a former doughnut shop on... Shanahan had grown up in her aunts’ Four Sisters Owl Diner in Lowell, launched in the early 1980s and still owned by one of the aunts. Source: www.bostonglobe.com
