memories of the East Side

 

I grew up on the East Side of St. Paul, and I still have some fond memories of the years I spent there as a kid.

I still get mail from St Pascal’s school, which I graduated from in 1961. Today, it’s known as St. Pascal’s Regional Catholic School, and it boasts some impressive educational achievements, but it’s considerably more expensive to attend than when it first opened in 1948. $10,000 a year for elementary school is a lot of money, which is why financial aid is utilized by most of today’s parents.

https://stpascalschool.org/

 Roughly 1/2 mile east of St. Pascal’s is the house on Third Street, where I lived until I got married in 1972.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2059-3rd-St-E-Saint-Paul-MN-55119/2156293_zpid/

About a mile to the east of the Third Street house is the location where the Minnehaha drive-in theatre showed movies. It opened in 1950 and closed in 1979, to become a flea market. It was demolished in 1986 to make way for another 3M office building.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/46025

 

Just down the road from the drive-in movie theatre was ANOTHER drive-in business, but it featured a much different type of entertainment. It was called A&W. Although if offered a variety of basic food items, the best part of your stop there was the genuine A&W root beer, which was always served in a chilled mug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A&W_Restaurants

 

The brand has been around longer than you might suspect, since the first A&W opened in California in 1919, when it started as a roadside root beer stand.

After WWII, the rapid increase in the number of automobiles in this country led to A&W drive-ins. By 1950, there were 450 drive-in restaurants in the country, and by the 1960’s, the number had swelled to more than 2000.

Since 1963, the company has gone through a series of owners, and is currently owned by Keuring Dr. Pepper. Although you can still find A&W locations (including one in Tucson) they are no longer drive-in locations. Fortunately, you can still by A&W root beer in most grocery stores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A&W_Root_Beer

For those who want to re-create those drive-in memories, they can now be found at Sonic, which first opened in 1953. Inspire Brands, the owner of Sonic, also owns Arby’s and Buffalo Wild Wings. Each year, the company holds a competition to find the best skating car hop in its system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Drive-In

Sonic, though, did not invent the “car hop”. That is an innovation by an even older chain called the Pig Stand.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/last-day-for-texas-celebrated-drive-in-pig-stands 

 

The first one opened in Texas in October 1921.

It was a roadside barbecue restaurant unlike any other: Its patrons could drive up, eat and leave, all without budging from their automobiles. (“People with cars are so lazy,” It’s founder, Jessie Kirby, Kirby explained, “they don’t want to get out of them.”) Kirby lured these car-attached customers with great fanfare and spectacle. When a customer pulled into the Pig Stand parking lot, teenaged boys in white shirts and black bow ties jogged over to his car, hopped up onto the running board—sometimes before the driver had even pulled into a parking space—and took his order. (This daredevilry won the servers a nickname: carhops.) Soon, the Pig Stand drive-ins replaced the carhops with attractive young girls on roller skates, but the basic formula was the same: good-looking young people, tasty food, speedy service and auto-based convenience. In addition to car hops, the chain also is the origin of deep-fried onion rings, chicken fried steak, and Texas Toast.

Like A&W, the chain no longer has any drive-in restaurants, but the chain still has ONE location left (in San Antonio) but it is now a “walks in” location.

Like most baby boomers, I remember some of my favorite things from the past, but they aren’t the same anymore, which just proves the old adage.

Nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be.

 

Pig stands