Been digging out black and white photos of childhood in the GI Bill suburban tract housing of the late Fifties and early Sixties. I've gotten myself into a project writing neighborhood history items for the neighborhood association newsletter where I grew up. What a blast from the past it's been so far. I'm so busy driving up and down Memory Lane that I'm barely functioning in the here and now!
I'm still stunned to live in a culture that dines out so often. As a family we ate out about once or twice a month back in the Sixties. My dad sometimes ate at lunch counters near his office. Family birthdays were celebrated at a restaurant where the waitress delivered a cake with a burning sparkler, and Dorothy, the organist, played a medley of "Happy Birthday", and "How Much is That Doggy in the Window?" That was also the site for celebrating passing Red Cross Beginners swimming lessons.
Recovering from strep throat was celebrated at a drive-in where orders were sent from the counter to the kitchen by pneumatic tube. I thought that was soooo high tech! Forty years later I still need mustard and pickles to bring closure to a headcold.
Rare, spontaneous meals out were at the A&W Root Beer Drive-In with the roller-skating carhops. I have to tell you that anyone who can roller-skate with a tray of burgers and full, frosty mugs of root beer, and then give correct change with a chucka-chinka coin machine belt, is my epitome of skilled labor. The spectacle was a poor kid's version of Ice Capades.
Do you remember hamburger restaurants with a telephone in each vinyl-upholstered "space-age" booth so you could call in your order? Sometimes the booth also had juke-box playlist capability! Our town had a Kings restaurant hang-out for each of the local high schools. Visiting another school's Kings could lead to fights in the parking lot. Kings would be above-capacity after every high school football or basketball game, win or lose, with the girls in cheerleader and pep club uniforms, knee socks and saddle shoes, and everyone ordering cokes and onion rings. Just imagine having to call your dad on the payphone when it was time to be picked up, and talking over the sound of a couple hundred classmates. Cellphone users are wimps!
One of the Kings' specialties was a sandwich called the "Tuna Frenchee". Yes, it sounds kinky. Imagine a tuna sandwich with Velveeta and Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread. Dip it in batter and deep fry it. Bite into this crunchy/creamy sensory delight!
I'm not sure when our college town discovered pizza, but our family didn't get the concept until the late-Sixties. Tacos followed in the early-Seventies, along with Chinese food. Before then, my neighborhood considered ordering from Chicken Delight a form of domestic dereliction of duty. Scandalized people gasped when the radio played the jingle, "Don't cook tonight! Call Chicken Delight!", as if it was Janet Jackson's breast, not the chicken's.
This little reverie of hot grease was partly provoked by a sight on the way home from Steven's dermatologist appointment today. He will corroborate my story. We saw a man riding a bicycle with a wheelie office chair perched over the front basket and handle bars. Are you wheeling in the years? Having a french fry basket?
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