WALK INTO JOE'S DINER IN LEE, Mass., and it's like stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting. Literally. In September 1958, Joe's was immortalized on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in The Runaway, which became one of Rockwell's best-known works. Since then, little has changed at Joe's—except for a print of The Runaway on the wall. "We keep the place the same," says Joe Sorrentino, 65, who has owned Joe's for 42 years. "When people come in I tell them they are in the twilight zone."
Since 1955, Joe has been doing good business selling hamburgers (price: still $1)—and, more lately, a touch of nostalgia. Along with Hugh Downs, who has a weekend home nearby, Joe's has served Bob Dole (on the campaign trail) and Alicia Silver-stone (who starred in a local summer stock production). But when Rockwell, a resident of nearby Stockbridge who died in 1978, first came by, hardly anyone took notice. Maybe because Rockwell actually posed police officer Dick Clemens and 8-year-old Ed Locke at a Howard Johnson in neighboring Pittsfield. But it's the image of Joe's that endures. As for Rockwell's theme, "I have no idea how he came up with it," says Locke, 47, never a runaway and now a carpenter in Housatonic, Mass. "But he was obviously a pretty creative fellow."
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