Some countries have a law requiring their citizens to serve in the military. I think that it should be mandatory for every American to work the graveyard shift at least once in their life. There are things to be seen and experienced between midnight and seven a.m. that don't happen at any other time. It's humbling. There is no fatigue like the kind that hits at 4:40 a.m., no sleep as woozy and choppy as the sleep you steal once the sun has come up, and no dollar ever as hard-won as the one earned while the rest of the world sleeps, snug and comfy in their warm beds. I did my time on third-shift, a year of working weekends as a busboy, then waitress, at a 24-hour diner on a blighted traffic circle in southern New Jersey. I learned a lot - even a few things about the restaurant business.

At age fifteen, I needed to earn real money. My Grandma Blackhair had to support my two brothers, herself, and me on a Social Security check, my late grandfather's Naval pension, and food stamps. She was determined to keep me in Catholic school, which meant that I needed to help out with tuition and extras. She had a friend, a salty, world-weary lady named Betty - a woman who, in another era, would have been called a tough old broad. Betty managed a seedy, but not disreputable diner called The Brooklawn. Betty agreed to take me on and teach me the waitressing ropes. The only catch was, I couldn't miss school or let my grades suffer. The solution was to have me work midnight to seven, every Friday and Saturday night. The diner was always packed once the bars closed, the tips would be good, and I'd still have plenty of time to study. It was taken for granted that at fifteen, lack of sleep wouldn't kill me, and since my shift started so late, I could still do cheerleading and attend dances or parties.

Sounded pretty good to me, especially the money. I'd earn about twice what a mall job would pay, in less than half the time, and it would all be cash. Little did I know how hard I'd work for that cash.

The Brooklawn Diner's main charm was its enormous lighted sign in the shape of an ocean liner. The ship was tilted, a little reminiscent of the sinking Titanic. The diner shared space on the traffic circle with a gas station, a dive bar, and a frozen custard stand. The food was standard diner fare, meaning a five-page menu offering everything from moussaka to stuffed flounder to french toast. The kitchen was a sweltering madhouse, staffed by impatient, cursing men and skinny, timid Mexican boys who'd hired on as dishwashers. The graveyard shift waitresses included a watery-eyed college student named Carol, an eight-months pregnant tomboy named Deenie, and an ancient, lipsticked crone named Peggy who called everyone "Doll" and was fearsomely territorial about her tables, her tips, and her cigarettes. Carol was obsessed with The Marshall Tucker Band, her weight, and her boyfriend Pedro, in that order. She was keeping Pedro hidden in her dorm at Widener College, and was forever sneaking him food and scheming new ways to get her father to accept him. Deenie was just trying to scrape together enough money to have her baby, and Peggy seemed to be waiting for Death himself to be seated in her section. My job was to clear and re-set their tables, pour water and coffee, and act generally helpful while not being too much in the way. The first couple of nights went by in a blur. It'd be pretty quiet from midnight till about 2:30 a.m. - mostly bowling league people, second-shift workers, weary travelers. Then, when the bars closed, all hell would break loose. The place would fill up - it seemed almost instantly - with crowds of drunks, bar employees, bands, and assorted strung-out night owls, all looking for breakfast, or at least a place to crash for a while and smoke. There would always be a table full of girls with mascara-smudged eyes, too-tight jeans, and spiky heels who'd demand endless amounts of service, leave appalling messes, and then tip their waitress a buck. Even pregnant Deenie couldn't inspire any sympathetic generosity in them. There were people so intoxicated that they'd order, and then pass out in the booth before their food could arrive. The cokeheads were easy to spot, all twitchy and chattering, chewing their lips raw, and pushing their food around the plate without ever tasting it. The stoners were mellow, and often transfixed by the huge revolving glass case of desserts, all of which looked incredibly scrumptious, but weren't, not if you were sober. The bar rush lasted about two and half hours during which the kitchen, hellish at any time, became a roaring pit of seething tempers and flying objects. It was common for the head cook, Gus, to flatly refuse to make a special order. "They'll eat what's on the G-D menu!" he'd scream, loud enough to be heard by the counter customers, even over the individual jukeboxes and the milkshake machine. Gus made Carol cry just about every weekend, was flipped off by the elderly Peggy at least once per night, and could only be reasoned with by Betty, who alone seemed to know how to manage him. For the first few weeks on the job, I thought I'd stumbled onto the set of some demented movie.

After a while, I got to know the regulars, and they got to know me. It was exciting at first, all that attention from Actual Older Men, even if they were usually drunk and a little sleazy. But once the novelty wore off, it became just another job, a hard one, done in the middle of the night in a loud, smoky, dirty place. Slowly, I learned how to wait tables, and how to write order checks in a manner satisfactory to the psychotic Gus. I learned how to smile while deflecting the sorry come-ons of crusty losers old enough to be my father. I learned how to be a million miles away in my mind, while pretending to really care whether or not table five had extra green peppers in their western omelet. In other words, I learned how it is that adults work a job just for the paycheck. It was a good lesson, and when the bar crowd had thinned out, all of us waitresses would sit, count our tips, load up on coffee, and watch the clock. We'd talk - or they'd talk, and I'd listen, as they told stories about their men, and sex, about their cars breaking down, or kids getting sick. Carol would wax poetic about some Marshall Tucker lyric, and depending on how things were going with Pedro, would either cry or tell us in a breathless voice about their most recent erotic escapade. The pressures of the restaurant business inspire instant intimacy among co-workers. When you add to that the lateness of the hour, the bleary, aching fatigue that comes from standing on your feet for too long, it's easy to understand how secrets come to be shared. It was rich stuff for a fifteen year-old, and some of those conversations haunt me still. Like Deenie, chain-smoking, saying that she had to keep her weight down, even eight months' pregnant because her boyfriend told her that he hated fat chicks. Or Peggy, who said that it was best not to make too many plans, since life wouldn't turn out like you hoped anyway, so why be disappointed?

One night, in late summer, there was a terrible auto accident on the traffic circle. It happened at about 3:00 a.m. or so. The diner was pretty crowded, really humming along when suddenly; there was a horrific noise, a loud BANG! A driver speeding around the curve lost control and smashed into a concrete wall at the gas station. Customers pushed and shoved their way through the double doors and into the parking lot, staring and whispering. If you've never seen a bad wreck, there can be a moment just afterward when everything is very quiet and still, and it seems impossible to believe that something terrible has happened. The car was broken and crumpled, and there was steam rising from the hood. In his glass cage the gas station clerk stood staring, open-mouthed, looking just like an Edward Hopper painting in the greenish fluorescent light. There was no movement or sound. Then - chaos. Sirens, lights, police cars, fire trucks, Gus appeared on the steps of the diner in his greasy kitchen whites, squinting to see what all the commotion was about. Slowly, people began trickling back inside. I got back to work loading plastic tubs with dirty dishes, pouring coffee, and fighting my way through the kitchen. I watched the accident scene through the windows, and was surprised at how quickly they cleaned it up.

Toward the end of my shift, a couple of paramedics came in for breakfast. They'd been at the scene of the wreck a few hours earlier. It was a bad one, they told us. Car full of teenagers, open cans and bottles everywhere. They were all pretty banged up, but would come out of it okay. Except for the girl. She died on the scene, nothing anybody could do. I found out later that she was a girl I knew vaguely from the neighborhood, a year or so older, and a student at a different high school. She was very pretty, and was known to party hard. Now she was dead, killed in the back seat of a car, at a gas station, on an ugly traffic circle on a summer night.

I refused my usual ride that morning, choosing instead to walk the couple of miles home. I'd been seeing the sunrise for long enough by that point that I didn't pay much attention to it - sunrise just meant that another shift was over. But that morning, as I walked home, pockets full of dollar bills, swinging my black apron over my shoulder, I knew that I wouldn't be working at The Brooklawn much longer. I'd learned how to wait tables, which would get me another job at a nicer place, with better hours. I'd had enough of the smoke, the drunks, the dirty dishes, and Gus to last me a lifetime. I was tired. But mostly, it was seeing that wreck that convinced me that the middle of the night wasn't any place that I was ready to be.