The road from diners to food trucksThe road from diners to food trucks

Everything old is new again.


While the food world is eating up food trucks like they were the latest hot cakes, portable food enterprises have roots stretching from the 1800s’ lunch wagons to the mid-20th century’s roadside diners.


During a summer vacation to southern Arizona, I ran across Dot’s Diner in Lowell — a recently closed tiny diner in a trailer-park motel that still had thick white coffee mugs standing sentry like soldiers on the darkened shelves.


With a little bit of digging, I discovered Dot’s was a relic of more than 2,000 such little diners that had been manufactured during the middle of the last century in Wichita, Kan., by Valentine Manufacturing Co.


The Kansas Historical Society has researched the Valentine Diners and fo...