The Beacon 443 Restaurant
Blakeslee Blvd - Lehighton, PA
Our final Mahoning Book Club meeting of the season was at an incredible diner that's just down the street from the drive-in. I've known that this was here for a long time, but this was the first time that we had an opportunity to stop in. It definitely will not be the last time.
When you see one of these on the door of a restaurant or a diner, you know that you're about to enter a time capsule of the 1980's, and you're probably in for an excellent meal.
This diner is very clean and well-kept, but it looks like nothing has changed since I was in grade school. Places like this are an absolute treasure, and they've become increasingly rare after the pandemic when many restaurants either went out of business or were sold to new owners who have unfortunately remodeled them in a misguided effort to keep up with the times.
They even have their old candy counter at the cash register. These used to be at practically every diner and pizza parlor that I've ever visited for the first twenty years of my life. The only places that I see them these days are for sale on eBay or at an antique store. Not only did The Beacon 443 still have this candy counter in place, but they also had it stocked with candy and gum that you don't see everyday. The Peanut Chews and Chunky bars caught my eye at first, but I was shocked to find that they also had Teaberry and Black Jack gum. I didn't even know they were still in production.
In addition to being a very cool, old-school diner, the menu at The Beacon 443 has at least a dozen different things that I'd love to try, including a hamburger eggs benedict that looked delicious! I was wearing my Jake Blues costume at the time, so I didn't want to get anything as potentially messy as that. I ended up getting the Reuben. I know... big surprise, right? It was delicious, and I'm going to have to resist the temptation to order when we come back so that I can try some other things from their menu.
The subject of our book club meetings is usually a novel that was adapted into a film that's being shown at the Mahoning that weekend. This time, our book was the 1818 Mary Shelley gothic horror classic, Frankenstein. I thought I had read this at some point in my life, but it became pretty clear to me after the first few pages that I hadn't. There are so many differences between the novel and the 1931 Boris Karloff film (and every other screen adaptation of this story that I've seen) that they have very little in common. The only things that I can think of that the movie has taken from the novel are the last name of the doctor and the fact that he has created a monster. Everything else is different, and the differences aren't trivial. If you love the Frankenstein movies and you haven't read it before, there's no better time to give it a shot than Halloween.
