When I was a kid, there was a Kresge right next door to a K-Mart, which was pretty odd since they shared the same bloodline. The lunch counter at Kresge had a dollar sundae that probably was forgettable except for the fact that they had helium balloons all over the place and children could pop a balloon and get a sundae for some random price between 0 and 99 cents.
My mom would occasionally treat me to a sundae, and the balloon thing was cool.
The guy who posted all of those Kresge background music records also set up a streaming site that you can leave playing in the background.
He has been restoring an old Seeburg 1000 machine off and on, and I have a new capstan that I machined for him that I still haven’t gotten around to shipping off. Maybe I ought to get onto that.
If you have a desire to listen to background music from the 60s and 70s, go to seeburg1000.com and let it play all day long. It’s not the Kresge stream, but there is likely a much broader amount of music.
There were two different Kresge chains, a traditional department store and a discount store. The discount chain became K-Mart in 1977. So two different clienteles.
There still is a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Lake George, NY. I made a point of eating there when we visited two years ago. The food was great! Better, in fact, than it used to be when HJ was a chain.
The last time I checked online it was still there, despite the pandemic. But you can never tell.
Also, I haven’t checked yet to see if anyone else posted about this.
[History of Naugles]Harold Butler purchased Naugles in 1979 when the chain consisted of three restaurants. The chain was expanded by a system of non-exclusive franchises, which later was ruled unlawful by a federal court.[2] Butler built Naugles up to 275 restaurants by 1984, when he sold the chain to Collins Foods International.[3] Naugles merged with Del Taco in 1988 when businessman Anwar Soliman purchased both companies at nearly the same time.[4][5] A few of the Naugles menu items, such as those with the “Macho” designation, found their way into the regular Del Taco menu. Also, the Naugles Taco Sandwich (Del Taco called it a “bun taco”) can still be ordered from Del Taco even though it does not appear as an item listed on the menu.)
Restaurant #2 was all of a block from my high school growing up. Ate there quite regularly. In fact, to catch some of the others above, there is a Weinerschnitzel about 4 blocks from my house, and in the next town to the south is one of the remaining Bob’s Big Boys. The town to the west has a Shakey’s.
Yeah, there’s a lot of regionality in restaurants and groceries.
For example, Whataburger is pretty much ubiquitous in Texas, Schlotzsky’s is everywhere in Austin, but the further from there you go, the sparser they seem to be, and in the DFW area, they seem to have been undergoing a slow decline- I can think of three that have closed in the past 5-7 years or so.
HEB is strange; they pretty much dominate the grocery business in San Antonio, Austin and Houston, as well as most of the rest of the state. But they’re just NOW getting into North Texas with the building of locations in Frisco and Plano.
Apparently they still exist in San Francisco, but the New York City locations are gone.
And I, too, miss the Horn and Hardart Automats. Apparently there were efforts to revive them, but for practical purposes, they closed in 1991.
Bailey’s
A place that served great hot fudge sundaes at marble-topped tables in the greater Boston area. They had at their peak 11 location, and had been open for over a century. The last one closed in the 1980s. I think Bailey’s sundaes were the ones the authors of Bored of the Rings had when they described Pepsi’s nightmare on the forced narc-march. (There was one in Harvard Square, not far from the Lampoon Castle)
Even without the user name, that post right there would have told me you were from my neck of the woods. I also miss Roy Rogers. I think the one I went to was at Cabin John Village. I never went much to Montgomery Donuts, but I remember the fire.
But I miss Shakeys Pizza the most. The chain still exists in the Philippines and one or two spots on the west coast. But nowhere near me.
When I had Spanish, I couldn’t roll my R’s to save my life. The teacher would offer extra help after class at Roy Rogers, or as she said Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroy Rrrr-oh-hairs.
Back in the '80s, you could still get them at Bridgeman’s in Minnesota. I would like to think Bridgeman’s is still around, but it probably isn’t. I lived a stone’s throw from one when I was in college and loved going there for ice cream sundaes and malted milks. They had real food too, and it was awfully good.
It wasn’t a chain, but Ella’s Deli in Madison served phosphate sodas until they closed in 2018. They were great. The place was kosher, served excellent all beef salami and beef bacon.
As a kid, my fave hamburger joint was Henry’s Hamburgers; I liked their burgs better than McD’s. Sadly, only one franchise remains today – somewhere in Michigan. In my neck of the woods (suburban Baltimore), our sole main drag had at least a half dozen chain burger stands: Burger Chef, Burger King, Henry’s, Gino’s, McD’s, Roy Rogers, plus several diner-type establishments that featured hamburgs. All within a roughly 6 mile strip of highway. I’m surprised that area could support all that at the same time.
One I miss here in Hawaii is Swensen’s Ice Cream. They’re not here but ubiquitous in Thailand. And frequently paired with a Pizza Hut next door or at least nearby, because the same franchisee runs them. It used to be a tradition for me to order an Earthquake with my wife on my birthday, usually after having consumed a couple of Pizza Hut pizzas.
We had one Swensen’s in my West Texas hometown, but it was a regular restaurant back then. Known for its ice cream but still a restaurant. I haven’t seen that format since I was a kid.
