Fast Food Feeding Frenzy

Cruising along Route 46 in Little Falls, New Jersey last weekend, I came upon a strange sight. A string of cars were pulled over on the shoulder which was slowing traffic across the busy highway.
As I gradually came upon the source of the slowdown, I saw streamers leading to a giant Grand Opening sign. Police were directing traffic off the highway while several confused teenagers were funneling them into the new parking spaces. North Jersey was welcoming its first Sonic Drive-In.

The double-wide Sonic had opened that same day within sight of a New Jersey landmark – the Park West Diner. It was literally a fast food feeding frenzy as drivers waited along the highway (no access roads here) for tater tots and a shake.

The scene reminded me of the first McDonald’s Restaurant I ever visited. A friend’s mother drove us to nearby Belleville to check out a new hamburger stand. It was crowded and I had to scrape off the onions and pickles but those fries sure were good. My folks preferred the diners but we hit my friend’s mother up on several occasions for a trip to the golden arches. It wasn’t fast food, it was affordable food and we became regulars when McDonald’s finally came to our town.

Allen’s official hangout in the early 1970’s was The Royal Drive-In. Located at the corner of Allen Drive and Central Expressway on the east side, The Royal was the only hangout until Dairy Queen opened on Main Street in 1973.

“We called it the figure eight,” said Honey (Bankhead) Gray, a 1974 AHS graduate. “Kids would drive up to one, see who was there, and then circle back to the other restaurant. Then we’d congregate in the Dry Goods Store parking lot at the corner of Allen Drive and Main Street between the two restaurants.”

The Sonic on East Main Street opened near Allen High School (Lowery Center) about 5 years later and shortly after that came the McDonald’s Restaurant at the expressway and McDermott. Rounding out the first wave of fast food venues was Burger King, which opened in 1983 and Taco Bell (currently Bar-B-Cuties), which opened in the late 1980’s.

These restaurants are so familiar but they have only been around for about 50 years. Many know the story of how Ray Kroc convinced the McDonald brothers to franchise their popular drive-in in 1954 but did you know that many other chains were already selling franchises by that time.

The first franchised food service chain was started by Allen and White in 1924 based around their unique root beer syrup. J. Willard Marriott opened an A&W franchise in 1927, changed the name to Hot Shoppes and began selling barbeque sandwiches. That led to today’s hotel empire.
Howard Johnson’s chain of restaurants were the first to spread across the country, mostly on the popularity of their ice cream. It was the creation of a machine that could turn liquid dairy mix into a continuous stream of soft ice cream in 1944 that started fast food’s golden years under the name Dairy Queen. One of Dairy Queen’s original partners, Harry Axene, then left to start the rival Tastee Freeze in 1950.

A chance meeting between two restaurant owners named Pete Harmon and Harlan Sanders led to the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain’s creation in 1952. Finally, a fellow named Dave Edgerton helped create the InstaBurger King chain in 1954.

For the record, Sonic was born as the Top Hat Drive-In in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1952. The name was later changed to Sonic because “service was delivered at the speed of sound.”
From what I could see, the new Sonic staff in Little Falls wasn’t exactly serving at the speed of sound but they had only opened that morning. Maybe I will drop them a note and recommend some roller skates.

Still Coo Coo For Cocoa Puffs

Cruising the store aisles to complete a grocery list is no problem for me but don’t ask me to pick out a box of cereal.

The cereal aisle of any grocery store has the power to stop me in my tracks. I know what peanut butter we buy and which tea is my wife’s favorite but I just can’t seem to make a decision in the cereal aisle.

I know I’m not alone because I often find myself working around others who suffer the same affliction.

Should I buy the Captain Crunch that’s on sale even though it has almost no nutritional value or should I pay double for some “adult” cereal that is supposedly better for me? Just this week I bought a box of Raisin Bran and Cocoa Puffs because they were on sale. I just couldn’t help myself but I was proud that I walked by the Frosted Flakes display without incident.
It has been years since we had Cocoa Puffs in the house but the box was almost half empty the next morning. The Raisin Bran remained fresh and unopened. Looks like the Carrolls are still coo coo for Cocoa Puffs.

I have a lot of practice cruising the cereal aisle. As a small kid in the A&P grocery store, my mother would turn me loose and say “go pick out a few boxes of cereal.” Mom didn’t allow those “sugar cereals” into our house so my choices were limited to products like Cheerios and Chex and Special K. I still jumped at the chance just so my mother wouldn’t buy Puffed Rice – the most tasteless cereal ever invented. It took two full tablespoons of sugar to bring a bowl of Puffed Rice to life.

I loved sleeping over at my friend’s houses because their parents bought those sugar cereals that I constantly saw advertised on television like Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms and many I no longer could name.

Searching the Internet for discontinued cereals this week, I was surprised how many I did remember – at least from the advertising.

Do you remember Quisp and Quake, Kaboom, Sugar Jets, Puffa Puffa Rice, Stars, Freakies, Fruit Brutes and Quickaroos for starters. How about Twinkles, the cereal with the book attached to the box?

Almost as memorable as the cereals were the characters who pitched them. There was Tony The Tiger (Frosted Flakes), Sugar Bear (Sugar Crisp), Linus the Lionhearted (Crispy Critters), Dig-Em Fog (Sugar Smacks), Snap, Crackle and Pop (Rice Crispies) and many others.
Cereals may come and go but three big companies still compete for shelf space: General Mills, Kelloggs, and Post. A 2008 survey showed that General Mills’ Cheerios is the most popular cereal in America with Kellogg’s Special K and Post’s Honey Bunches of Oats running in second and third place. The all-time favorites list shows Life, Cap ‘n Crunch and Frosted Flakes in the top three spots. Rounding out the top five were Apple Jacks and Honey Bunches of Oats.
Donkey Kong cereal does not appear on either list. Neither does Banana Frosted Flakes, Fruity Marshmallow Crispies, Mr. T’s, Strawberry Shortcakes or Urkle-O’s. Can you imagine what an unopened box of Urkle-O’s would be worth today? Neither can I.

Eating cereal became such a bedtime routine in my house that the only motivation I needed to take a bath as a kid was a bowl of Cheerios, A bowl of cereal with ice cold milk is still a late night treat in the Carroll household.

Come to think of it, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs sounds like fun if there if the box isn’t empty.

It's Getting Better All The Time

Do I really need to do this again? Do I really need to buy another copy of the Beatles album Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band?

A logical response would be no since I already owned seven copies over the past 32 years. Our first copy became family property when my mother purchased it at E.J. Korvettes in the summer of 1967. Years later my brother laid claim to it as I headed off to college. I purchased a used copy from Cheap Charlie’s discount records and later upgraded to an unscratched version in honor of the album’s tenth anniversary.

The 8-track version I purchased in 1977 got stolen along with my under dash 8-track player which was not exactly a great loss. I upgraded to a cassette player for my car and promptly recorded Sgt. Peppers to a new Maxell UDXLII tape. The cassette later melted or was eaten by the tape player.

Ten years later my wish for a perfect copy of Sgt. Peppers came true when a release of the entire Beatles catalog on compact disc began. I gradually replaced every Beatles lp with a scratch-free, pop-free compact disc.

Those discs were eventually loaded onto numerous Mp3 players which brings me to the present day. I now have the ability to play Sgt. Peppers or any Beatles song ever made with the twirl of a finger on my IPOD.

So why would I consider buying Sgt. Peppers or any other Beatles album again?

Well, the engineers at Abbey Road Studios have digitally remastered the entire Beatles catalog and the results are worth the cost.

Digital remastering is a process that literally pulls the music apart, cleans it up and reassembles it in the way it was originally intended. The push to digitize music in the late 1980’s cleaned up the scratches but flattened the sound, according to critics. Most of us didn’t notice but there was a big difference between the early vinyl recordings and the new compact discs. New digital technology now allows engineers to recreate that original vinyl sound.

Imagine scanning an old photograph and digitally cleaning it up. The photo visually comes back to life as long lost color and details reappear. The audio remastering process yields similar results.

Reviewers are raving about the quality of the remastered albums, particularly the early mono recordings such as Please Please Me and Hard Days Night.

Apparently the album that shines the brightest is Abbey Road, the Beatles’ final studio effort that was first released 40 years ago.

Beatle fanatics can purchase the entire 14 album remastered set for $260 or grab a limited edition boxed set called The Beatles in Mono for $299. The 14 discs will also be available individually for about $19 each.

The series was released in conjunction with The Beatles Rock Band interactive video game on September 9. Together, the game and “new” discs have created a bigger Fab Four frenzy than we have seen in 40 years.

As for my personal collection, I will probably drop $19 to see what the excitement is about. The odds are good that I will get hooked once again and eventually repurchase the entire set. Anyone interested in a complete set of vintage Beatle compact discs?