by Jennifer Hachigian Jerrard
Hey, did you know you can read 4 full issues of Jen’s minicomic Pocket Editor online? You totally can, and probably should!
The Hex Diner was mentioned in Jack Edward Shay’s 2012 book Bygone Binghamton: Remembering People and Places of the Past as part of a list of defunct restaurants that “deserve a final nod of recognition before they pass completely into oblivion.” It was also called Bo-Dan’s at some point.
Want ads for the diner show up in various scanned issues of the Binghamton Press from the late 1950s through the ’60s, including this one from 1960 (pdf), calling for a waitress to do “night work”. Presumably that’s a euphemism for putting hexes on people.
Side note: I’m fascinated by old classifieds. The bluntness of some of these employers and landlords’ ads (pre-equal employment/fair housing laws) makes for compelling—if off-putting—reading. Plus, the linked page above has a layout artist hiring himself out for $4/hr and a Nancy strip to boot!
