BoomerZoo Almanac for April 15-21, 2007: Hamburgers
Ray Kroc opened the first franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955. But by the time I saw my first real live McDonald’s, they were already into the millions of burgers sold, Ronald McDonald had been around for nearly 10 years and the Big Mac for five.
When I was growing up, the White Castle was apparently still popular in the Midwest, but the A&W was the burger chain most widely found in our part of the country. [White Castle reports selling more than 500,000,000 burgers last year, while A&W says it gave away about a million root beer floats for its 85th anniversary celebration on June 21, 2004]. We loved the drive-in feature, but we weren’t averse to walking over for a frosty mug of root beer on those very hot summer days. In those days, root beer to-go came in a cone-shaped beverage container, which all the 10-year-olds I knew thought were very cool-looking
I later became one of thousands of teenage girls working at drive-in restaurants. We were called carhops, because our customers arrived in cars, and I suppose also because we were expected to hop to it. Hop was already a very old dance style by the time I was waitressing at this joint, but I suppose that’s where the term originated. We also went to sock hops—so called because we danced in our socks. I imagine this was mainly due to the site of these dances—they were held in school gyms, and we weren’t allowed to wear street shoes on the gym floor. Anyway, being a carhop had its points. The place I worked was one of the turn-arounds for the guys in their cool cars who were cruising Main Street—only where I lived it was called “dragging the gut” and the main street wasn’t called Main Street. One of the coolest cars of that era was the Ford Mustang, which was unveiled on April 17, 1964. Being a carhop at the coolest drive-in/U-turn in town didn’t actually net me many dates, but it did help me keep up with the local gossip.
At the other end of the main drag in our small town was the best hamburger joint in town and possibly in the Universe: Iceberg. Like the place I worked, this was no chain restaurant. But unlike the place I worked the owner cared as much about quality as he did about making a buck, so he went to the market himself to pick out the best, the freshest lettuce and tomatoes every morning. The sesame-seed buns were soft, the burgers were thick and juicy and talk about your special sauce! Mmm-mmm-MMM those were good burgers. My mouth is watering just thinking about them—and don’t even get me started on the French fries! This restaurant only had drive-through window service, but these burgers were so good, we didn’t mind waiting in a long line of cars to get one. They were SO good, we didn’t mind paying a little bit more for them. They were SOOO good, we didn’t mind risking detention to leave the high school grounds at lunch time to buy one. Ok, this last part is a stretch—we didn’t necessarily mind risking detention to leave the high school grounds to go to a friend’s house and play cards. But if an Iceberg hamburger, fries and shake was offered along with the card game, I believe the vice principal would have gladly joined us.
