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By BILL DUHART
Courier-Post Staff
Figuring out where the Oaklyn Diner is should not be brain surgery.
But if you guessed Oaklyn, perhaps it is.
The Oaklyn Diner is actually in Haddon Township. The 68- year-old institution sits on the White Horse Pike, right across the street from Oaklyn, but it belongs to the township.
It illustrates the scope of the township's identity crisis.
There are recognizable sections, such as Westmont and West Collingswood Heights. But both share ZIP codes with post offices in neighboring towns.
Residents get mail with addresses such as Haddonfield, Collingswood, Gloucester City, and, of course, Oaklyn. It makes for a confusing situation, at best.
Helen Glinos said her customers don't seem to care that her Oaklyn Diner is not actually in Oaklyn. She said she has no plans to change the name.
``My friends ask me all the time why I don't change the name,'' said Glinos, 54, who has owned the diner with her husband since 1968. ``I just tell them after all these years, it's a landmark.''
Many customers and employees agree.
``I've been coming here since I was a pipsqueak,'' said Rose Aceto, 32, a waitress at the diner. ``When I was a teenager, me and my friends would come here to eat. When I turned 21, we'd come here to get a drink. It's someplace I can't get away from.''
Patty Fietto knows all about the township's identity crisis. She helps run the family restaurant Rexy's. The 59- year-old Black Horse Pike institution is in the West Collingswood Heights section of the township. The Heights are a noncontiguous outpost separated from the township by Audubon and Oaklyn.
It has a West Collingswood Heights mailing address, which shares a ZIP code with Mount Ephraim. Fietto lives on Bradley Avenue in the township, a block from Haddon Township High School, but has a Haddonfield mailing address.
``We knew where we were looking 21 years ago when we moved in to our home but we didn't know it had a Haddonfield mailing address,'' Fietto, 47, said. ``We didn' t realize it was so broken up and had so many post offices delivering to it.''
Fietto said customers at the restaurant don't seem to care what township it's in.
``All they know is it's on the Black Horse Pike across from the Audubon Shopping Center,'' she said.