Growing up in Louisa – Pigging Out!
Weekly feature . . . by Mike Coburn
Back when I was growing up I felt that there were perceived differences between eating establishments that I learned about over time. As a little kid, I saw certain differences very early on, and then determined for myself which best fit the need of the occasion. Granted, in the very early days I wasn’t the one making the decision on where to visit. Mom held my hand and took me to wherever she thought correct.
Each type had an effect my life, but some had more than others. For example, I knew early on to classify some food service outlets as either a genuine, full-service restaurant, or if they fit better into one I would come to call lunch counters, or more simply, a soda shop. To make further distinctions, I saw soda shops as comparatively small and sellers of mostly ice cream and sodas. These were usually located inside a larger, non-food service business such as a drug store, department store, dime store, or even a pool hall.
Despite their diminutive size, these side businesses dispensed wonderful concoctions that I considered treats. It was a joyous day when I came to visit one of those. Sure, some carried minimal light foods, such as chicken salad sandwiches, and the like, but not the wide varieties provided by restaurants. When one of these little establishments added a grill, then they were less a soda shop, but more of a ‘lunch counter.’ In either case, they were a side-line business that helped attract more customers and increase income for the owners. I think everybody in town ate at the Favorite Five and Dime whenever it was appropriate, so this place became a model of what a lunch counter meant to me.
In my developing mind, I compartmentalized the businesses so that when a full meal was required, I’d think ‘restaurant.’ If a light lunch was needed, then a lunch counter would get my vote. If all I wanted was a cool treat, then I’d be off to a soda shop. To confuse this little twerp, a well-meaning aunt took me to a fancy ‘tea room’ in a big city department store. We had some hot tea and cookies and watched a ‘fashion show’ with real-live models. La-de-da! (pinky pointed out.) This wasn’t really ‘my cup of tea,’ if you know what I mean.
Bonified restaurants were ‘stand-alone’ establishments who’s only business was ‘food service.’ Even Bailey’s Cafeteria in Huntington fit into this category. Restaurants served drinks, ice cream, pies, cakes, but also had a full menu, including fried chicken, veal cutlets, hamburger steak, liver and onions, meat loaf, fish, and loads of vegetables. They almost always also had onion rings, hamburgers, and French fries, which were just right for this growing boy. (For those who remember how skinny I was, it was obvious I didn’t go to these places very often.) Restaurants were the places where the jukeboxes blared, and uniformed waitresses rushed filling order while hoping for big tips.
During my school days in Kentucky, I spent a good bit of my discretionary change at Ed Land’s Sundry on the northwest corner of Madison and Lock Avenue, straight across from the post office. A defunct motel occupied the space the last time I was there. I remember pausing and feeling a bit of grief that I could not repeat a visit there. I remembered those great chocolate milkshakes I ordered regularly in hopes of putting on some weight. (Not a problem, these days.) Ed Land’s was not a real drug store, but was a Sundry store. I looked up the meaning once and found out it just means ‘a whole bunch of things.’ It kind of resembled the drug stores they build today, but it had no drug counter. Instead, it had a nice, well-lit soda bar in the back and a few booths for seating. I remember Ed having it remodeled once. It was a little traumatic, but I soon settled in with a shake. Up front Ed had a hot nut station like one I’d seen in Huntington. He carried lots of toiletries, Hallmark cards, perfumes, and some small kitchen appliances, etc., but no drugs except ‘over the counter’ kinds.
A few months back I wrote an article about remembering when Dee’s Drive-in was built. At first an ice cream store, but a little later added a grill and sold burgers, onion rings, french fries, and all those things the teen of the day wanted. Dee was also the first to have ‘drive-in’ car hops in town, and maybe the only. While there were others in Huntington, like Shoney’s, this was ‘our’ teen haunt. It was a boon for teens who gathered there in the evenings to ‘see and be seen.’ When it was first built, it was possible for cars to drive around the place, but later the dining room was added on the east side that blocked the practice. When I was there last I saw that car hops remained. Dee’s added more and more to their menu and became the place to be, not just for teens, but for everyone. I visited there and had lunch the last couple of times I’ve visited.
Further up town Rip’s Restaurant stayed busy with the adults. Kids would grab lunch there, but generally Rip’s was a considered a ‘finer’ restaurant.
In town there was also LuLu’s, and the Hamburger Inn. Just on the edge, or outside of town there was the Flattop Inn, the Kentuckian, and Hinkle’s Motel, which was near to the town’s famous ‘locks.’ Each had a full menu, handled families and occasional groups.
While one or two may have had the reputation of being expensive, by today’s standards they were not. The town was small and the economy was just recovering from the depression, so the really ‘high class’ restaurants had to stay in the larger cities. I can’t write an in-depth description about the one’s we had because I didn’t have money to eat out very often. It had to be a pretty important occasion and even then, I ordered by menu prices instead of what I would like to have eaten. Even so, it was a treat to eat out whenever I could.
Of the types I’ve mentioned, it’s the soda fountains that best lends itself to the kind of nostalgia this column attempts to incite, at least for me. The first time I became aware of a soda fountain was on a trip downtown to what I thought was the bus terminal in the middle of the block on Main Cross Street. I wasn’t old enough to know much about drug stores, but I certainly had heard the adults talk about going there. I only knew the place was called “Doc Skagg’s” by my family. I would discover later that it was a marvelous place that provided many services to the little town. The drug counter was in the back, but the front was a haven for the town’s adult males. When I went in there I saw a bunch of stuffed animals that were displayed on a shelf that ran high around the store. They looked real enough to me. It was loaded with the trophies of the ‘hunt.’ I was glad to hear they were dead, because some of them looked dangerous to me.
The store also had a big, black chalkboard just inside the front door, to one’s left, where the returns were posted on election day. I witnessed this posting a few times, although I can’t say who was elected. I think maybe it was Truman, but I couldn’t swear to that. Anyway, a crowd of men were inside and another crowd was outside looking through the window. Because I was small at the time, I was able to squeeze past the men and get inside. Every time the numbers changed there was either a celebration or a groan throughout the crowd. It was the reaction that was important to me, since I had no idea what elections were about. Even when someone told me, I still didn’t know. It looked like some kind of sport, since the cheering sounded about the same.
I remember when granny was sick with a cold once and my uncle, Dr. Loyal Wray had me go down to the store to get a big bottle of syrup that was used to make fountain cokes. It was a good-sized jug that took a real effort for me to get home. I had to take several breaks on the way. I remember going a block or so and then sitting the jar down. Then after a time I picked it up again and tried to go another block. The jug had a little finger loop on the neck that helped me keep it from slipping from my grip, but the weight put a lot of pressure on my tender, young fingers. They turned white from the effort. Anyway, I guess the syrup helped granny since she lived another eight or ten years.
I think the store had a few small tables and chairs that customers used where they had some ‘pop’ or something else from the soda fountain. Across America, the owners of drug stores had found it beneficial to add soda fountains in their stores. Some carried snack foods, too, but I don’t remember that at Doc Skaggs.’ Usually I did whatever business I had to do and left, since most of the occupants were men and I was just a squirt. That’s the one impression I have about this place was that it was mostly adults and mostly men. This store was also where the bus came to drop off various packages, where passengers disembarked, or climbed aboard the busses for the trip out of town. I remember seeing big round cans being unloaded from beneath the bus that held movie films that would later be shown at the Garden Theater. I think that happened fairly frequently, but I wasn’t there to meet many buses.
The ten-cent store (Favorite Five & Dime) had a full-fledged ‘short-order’ grill on one side with art-deco stools that I sat on from time to time. At first my mom had to help me up on what seemed awfully high perches, but later I would grow sufficiently to easily straddle the stools. Even after those years passing by, the style of the chrome-wrapped seats seemed always in fashion. Even today, while the world seems to be falling back to mid-century modern, it was a common sight nearly everywhere in the late forties, fifties and sixties. In many establishments we used those tall chrome and red leather seats, the table-top jute box selection devices, the milkshakes, banana splits, root beer floats, sundaes, cones, and boxed chips or pretzels.
I remember that some soda fountains used those little conical paper cups that fit into a reusable metal holder. I felt a little cheated because I thought the size too small. I also felt the paper did little to enhance the flavors like real glass did. Readers may remember that one drink became the rage for a time. It was then that I had my first Orange Crush. I also had chocolate cokes and cherry cokes, while sitting in a booth reading a newly purchased comic book. (One of those would have serious value today, but alas, I have none.)
Back then, when you ordered a milk shake, it was mixed in a big shiny aluminum container that was filled with ice cream, and poured into a tall glass. The metal container always held more of the drink, so it was left so you could refill the glass. It was like having two milkshakes! As I write this a memory jumped into my mind that made me laugh. There was an episode of Andy Griffith when Barney tried to drown his sorrows by drinking four or five milk shakes. The problem that disturbed him cleared up, but he got sick. He moaned that he ‘ought never to drink when he was upset.’ Andy and Ellie, the pretty druggist, laughed.
For a time, a normal milkshake was easy to drink through a straw, but as time went on many sellers advertised ‘thick’ milkshakes. They were good, to be sure, but a lot harder to get up through straws. Many a straw collapsed as the customer sucked and got nothing. They were also too thick to turn up and drink without risking the whole glob sliding into your face. They had to start serving them up with spoons instead of straws. I love both, but the thicker ones are not so much a shake as a container of soft ice cream.
As I grew older and visited other, larger communities I experienced larger lunch counters. I remember one on the first floor of a multiple story department store that had several peninsulas that enabled the uniformed waitress to walk down aisles of customers facing each other. I guessed they might serve over fifty people at once.
I remember visiting New York and seeing several narrow, standup counters where you could grab a quick hot dog, gulp it down and get on your way. Those dogs had a thicker skin than the ones we find in today’s supermarkets. They were so good. There were also ‘deli’s’ where you could buy the sliced meat and cheese, or order up a thick sandwich. I liked the Hot Pastrami and Cheese on rye, but later learned about ones called Rueben that had corned beef and sauerkraut and another called Sailor Boy that was a hot pastrami, cheese and knockwurst. Today, these wonderful delicatessens are common in most cities.
I was around twelve when I bit into my first pizza. My life changed. There were so many options to try and so little time. I like the deluxe, nearly totally loaded ones, with a couple of exceptions I avoid. Dead fish belongs in the fish market, not on pizza!
There’s also lots of places that sell chicken now, in several different forms. I haven’t found any bad ones, yet, but I’m willing to keep looking. In fact, I don’t want to take sides, I love them all. Then there’s the Mexican menus. I grew up liking chili, but the ones I get now don’t compare. When I was growing up it was rare for my aunt to add chili powder, so the resultant dish was mild, if not bland. When my wife makes it for us now, it is hot, hot, hot!
Then there’s Asian and Indian foods, and foods from nearly everywhere around the world. Isn’t life good? When I was young a chicken salad sandwich or an egg or ham salad was about the choice, unless you had money enough to indulge. I didn’t. I think Spam, Vienna Sausages, sardines, and bologna are just memories and are reminders of the past. There’s too little time to mess with those.
So, are you getting the idea I like to eat? If so, you got that right! The problem is that I’m paying for those many years of indulgent behavior. I’ve been on a new eating regiment for about three months now and I’ve lost more than fifty pounds. Sadly, I need to lose another fifty. That may be a goal too late to fully achieve, but I’m resigned to keep trying until I win, or lose. I must make this happen because it gives the best chance to watch those grandchildren grow up. The benefits are already showing up in how I feel and my ability to get around. I feel better and can do more…but as you can see, I do remember the good times!
