EXPORT, Pennsylvania — Karen Wade was busy waiting on the breakfast crowd, many of them evidently regular customers because they bantered back and forth on a first-name basis, when my 3-year-old granddaughter Louisa and I grabbed the last two empty spots along the shiny chrome counter of Wade’s Breakfast & Grille on Washington Avenue.

Within five minutes, Louisa was already having a conversation with 72-year-old Gloria and being rewarded for her cheerfulness with a sliver of Gloria’s pumpkin pie. Walter, who was sitting at the bend of the lunch counter, answered Louisa’s questions about why he was wearing overalls — he is a train engineer — and another gentlemen, whose name we never learned, sent her a piping hot, made-to-order cinnamon doughnut before we even placed our order.