I love Jean’s Place in Hoosick Falls, N.Y. The food is excellent and the atmosphere rich and warm, but the heart of the place is the people who work there and eat there.

Maria and I go to have breakfast at least once a week there, and I have lunch with my friends there (I don’t have too many friends, and we don’t go to lunch too often, but still…).

There are 15 or so tables in the diner and a long diner counter with stools. The people who sit there all seem to know one another. Everybody seems to have known the waitresses for many years.

Everyone is greeted by their first names, and there is all sorts of banter and ribbing.

I can tell the farmers, they are big quiet men in jeans.

I am as comfortable at the diner as anywhere, especially now that Mary has bullied me into ordering an egg n’ cheese the right way (with an English muffin and home fries).

Robin knows everybody who walks in the door – she is hugging somebody every time I look up) and saying goodbye when everyone leaves. The waitresses are notoriously tough, but always with a big heart.

Robin knows most of the customers by name, Maria and I are usually “guys” or “hon.” She knows what people will drink before they sit down, and their coffee is usually waiting for them.

Jean’s is a  working-class place. It is unpretentious and honest. They do social work there, comforting people in trouble..people out of work, new widows, people with cancer. They mean it, too.

I understand my place there. I am a refugee everywhere I go, I will never be mistaken or accepted as a local, and I can’t go back where I came from, I’m too spoiled and different now.

So I’m caught in that twilight zone between places. I will always live between two worlds. And that suits me; I’ve lived outside of the tent my whole life.

I come from a family of refugees and have always felt like one.

The people at Jean’s look at me curiously when I come in, they know I’m not from there right away, they can tell by the way I dress and look. But some now wave to me when I come in and kid me when they walk by. They know me as the guy with the blog who’s been hanging out at Jean’s.

I never feel that I am unwelcome there.

I should mention that the very popular “Men Do Stupid Shit” series Mary and Robin started on this blog has been discontinued.

Mary doesn’t like being on camera, and I wouldn’t push it. Maybe it will return one day; it would make a great cable show.

Usually, I am asked to bring Zinnia inside after we eat so people can say hello. Zinnia is a Wasp Princess, and the regulars are shocked and intrigued by her.

I sometimes fantasize that I can sit at the counter with the guys and their spouses and shoot the breeze. I’m not sure that can ever happen, but I love Jean’s so much because the community still lives and thrives there when it is fading almost everywhere else.

I love the community and sense it all around me there.