Peggy Sue’s Diner
Yermo, Calif
Put on your best poodle skirt, slip into those blue-suede shoes, smooth out those spit curls and rev up your hopped-up ride. You're going to Peggy Sue’s Diner in Yermo, Calif.
It’s all about the vibe: the 50s music, waitresses in turquoise and pink uniforms and cute vintage-looking hats who hand out pink menus that say “Peggy Sue’s” in bold cursive writing. Did I mention the music? There is nothing like 50s music to put a smile on your face and make you want to dance the jitterbug.
Walking through the big double doors of the jukebox facade is to stroll through a wormhole onto a Happy Days set.
To the left is the ice cream parlor and gift shop with every kitschy, super-hero-disney-charcter-hollywood-star trinket or memorabilia you can imagine.
You want a Wonder Woman cookie jar? They have it. How about a glitzy, hanging-wall clock with genuine Swarovski crystals? On the back wall. Purses, wallets and snow globes, lots and lots of snow globes. And stuffed animals. Lots and lots of those too.
Did I mention the candy? My sweet tooth was aching in anticipation.
On the right, the formally dressed maitre‘d is ready to lead you down the yellow brick road to several different eating areas including the Pizza Parlor in the back overlooking the turtle-filled ponds. I think i saw a really BIG goldfish in there too. It flashed orange and red as it slid slowly through the dark water. Like the legendary Loch Ness Monster. In Yermo.
Set in the shadow of the Calico Mountains, Peggy Sue’s is an original roadside diner according to their web site.
When owners Peggy Sue and Champ Gabler bought the property in the mid 80s, they knew they wanted to build a diner — it had, after all, been a diner before it closed years before. The original building was a home built in 1947. The current diner section was the breakfast nook.
“In 1954 they [the original owners] added the barstools and the booths and made it a pie shop,” Peggy Sue said in an 2015 interview with television host Joel Greene.
“Originally, when we bought the diner this room was completely empty, nothing on the walls or anywhere but all of the equipment was in and the counter and booths were there,” she said.
So Champ and Peggy Sue decorated the walls with the movie memorabilia they had collected over the years; mementos and memories. The “Walls of Fame,” she calls them. “I’ve done a lot of fun things. When you do something really fun, you want to share it.”
They opened Peggy Sue’s Diner in 1987.
Famous and not-so-famous visitors pose with the waitresses and with the larger-than-life sculptures of The Blues Brothers and Elvis. Their photos hang alongside portraits of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.
The outdoor Diner-saur Park is like the old roadside stops in Peggy Sue’s childhood, she added.
The BIG dinosaurs can be seen from Interstate 15. The tree-shaded area is a great place for kids to run around and use that pent-up energy from hours on the road.
Speaking of Elvis, he has definitely NOT left the building at Peggy Sue’s. The King, ensconced in a wood and glass box as a fortune teller, greets you at the door with a sonorous “What are you waiting for? For a little change, I’ll give you wisdom fit for a king.”
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