GREENTOWN — There is good-natured bantering going back and forth as the regulars at Halley’s Restaurant make their daily appearance.

At 8 a.m. on a recent weekday, there are customers sitting at several tables, casting verbal jabs between them while the coffee is flowing.

But long before the first customer enters the door or, for that matter, the sun rises, Darlene Fitch is walking through the door at 4:30 to begin preparing the breakfast morsels.

Fitch, 79, who looks a lot younger than her age, has been working at the Greentown eatery for a decade, after retiring from General Motors.

Six days a week Fitch arrives at Halley’s Restaurant to prepare for the day’s business.

“I will continue to work as long as my health allows,” Fitch said with a grin. “The word retirement is not in my vocabulary. It is better to wear out than rust out.”

Her normal shift is from 4:30 to 8 a.m. and she begins each day by frying bacon and making gravy.

“I enjoy working,” Fitch said.

The owner of Halley’s, Barbara Campbell and her husband, Lewis, are good people to work for, Fitch said.

“I can tell by the order who is in the restaurant,” she laughed. “We know the customers well and the owners like for you to be friendly with the people who come in.”

Fitch said every morning she eats a bowl of oatmeal, but rarely eats out because she watches her diet.

Customer Terry Tygart, 62, wearing a cap with a farm company insignia, is called good naturedly by the other customers the “Mayor of Greentown” and relate that he knows everything going on in the town.

“I used to be the mayor,” Tygart laughed, “but now I live in the country.”

Retired from Delco, Tygart, 62, now helps different groups with their farming work.

“I’m here just about every morning,” he said of Halley’s. “This is a good restaurant and they have what I want here.”

Tygart said he normally comes to Halley’s earlier in the day, but had planned on taking his wife of 40 years, Deanna, to the IU Medical Center in Indianapolis.

“There is a different atmosphere earlier than later in the morning,” he said. “There is a different group of people. We talk about everything, the normal things that happen.”

Tygart said he likes to tease the employees to keep them in a good humor.

Chuck Taylor, 27, is the cook that comes in at 8 a.m. to relief Fitch on Monday and Tuesday. The rest of the week he works from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

“No, absolutely not,” Taylor said when asked if he imagined himself as a cook. “I have been working here since February. I hung drywall for nine years, but the business was slowing down.”

Taylor is the son of owner Barbara Campbell and said that helped him get the job.

“The worst thing is the heat in the summer,” he said of working as a cook.

“Everything is good,” Campbell said of the food at Halley’s. “For breakfast, most people order the same thing.

“I have to eat my own cooking or go hungry,” he laughed.

Lining the walls of the restaurant are replicas of NASCAR stock cars, which has a story all of its own.

“Those are my husband’s,” Campbell said of the collection. “I wouldn’t let him put them up in the house. I told him he could put them up at the restaurant to make the men feel more at home.”

She said Lewis is allowed to watch NASCAR races on television, but in the couple’s bedroom.

The Campbells purchased the restaurant nine months ago, but Campbell managed it for two years before that.

“I have done this all my life,” she said. “We talked about it a long time. I didn’t think it was a big deal to own it. It turned out to be a lot more work than I thought.”

Campbell said there are regulars that come into Halley’s every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“We know what they eat and what they want,” she laughed.

Campbell said her husband, who sells tickets for a living will be coming to work full time at the restaurant in the near future.

“Right now we don’t time to do nothing but run this place,” she said. “I’ve wanted him to work here full time for a long time.”

Ken de la Bastide can be reached at (765) 454 -8580 or via e-mail at ken.delabastide@kokomotribune.com