"The people are more friendly here," says Locklear of Highlandtown, who has "Mike," her late husband's name, tattooed in Gothic letters on her neck. "Because it's such a small place, you can't help but talk to everybody."
On warm spring days, the doors of the restaurant are left open and the scents of gasoline and faint something from the water blow through the seating area, which holds about two dozen diners. Nearly everything in the restaurant - the pendant lights, the tiled floor, the counter with its faint lace of graffiti - is green or white or silver.
Outside, one sign is smashed, a few jags of white plastic left. But a smaller sign proclaims the chain's original motto: "Buy 'em by the bag."
The first Little Tavern was founded in Louisville, Ky., in 1926 by entrepreneur Harry Duncan, but the chain soon flourished in this area. Baltimore's first Little Tavern opened on Mount Royal Avenue in the summer of 1930. Soon the tidy, white restaurants with pine green-peaked roofs sprouted up in 10 other locations in the city, including Greenmount Avenue in Waverly, Belvedere Avenue in Park Heights and Conkling Street in Highlandtown. Others opened in Annapolis, Glen Burnie and Towson. A late-night scene at a Little Tavern is featured in Barry Levinson's Baltimore-based film, Diner.
Along with similar chains like White Castle, White Tower and White Coffee Pot, Little Taverns were designed to appeal to the country's first wave of automobile tourists, says Richard J.S. Gutman, who has written several books about diners.
The restaurants were meant to appear "clean, inviting and futuristic" to travelers unaccustomed to driving and dining far from home, he says.
Competition from the fast-food chains drove many of the small burger joints out of business. The Little Tavern chain has been sold several times over the past three decades - and the number of restaurants has declined steadily.
A Fuddruckers subsidiary bought it in the 1980s but sold it after suffering major losses that it blamed on prior owners, according to newspaper reports. In the early 1990s, employees bought the remaining restaurants.
Many have become other businesses, such as Kennedy Fried Chicken on Greenmount Avenue. Others have been demolished. The exception is the Holabird Avenue restaurant.
The owner, Al Roy of Abingdon, has shut down the other three Little Taverns he bought and two he opened in Ocean City. He shut down the second-to-last restaurant, on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown, last fall.
