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The Anti-Sonic Burger
califcomedy--Haven't been out here in a month, so missed the last comments. FYI, Lionel has been taken private again and is partly owned by Neil Young from CSN&Y. He has an autistic (I think) child and found, when the child was younger, that trains gave them something to do together. Mike Wolf, who started out working for his neighbor (Williams) by assembling trains in his basement after school, started MTH and blew Lionel out of the water when it was going through the multiple ownership thing. Its a long story, but Mike asked to license tinplate back then and they told him to eat dirt. Today, after he sued Lionel and won (industrial espionage), he has joined forces with the new owners and repros the early Lionel tinplate stuff and it is beautiful--and very expensive! They even have the Lionel name on the trains. Mike made MTH tinplate for many years and it is also beautiful stuff. MTH decided to take the "toy" out of the toy train business from the start, and his stuff is amazingly well done. It has its problems, of course, like anything made in Korea, but for the most part he has it under control. I think the told me once that his biggest headache was US Customs. I guess all businesses have their little gremlins. Anyway, check out the newest Lionel and MTH. You will be surprised at the quality and so forth--kind of where Lionel was going when rocket ships captured the minds of kids in the late '50s and early '60s and they had to sell out. Regarding your book, there were many stories when I was growing up in VA about Shoney's Big Boy, which was the version back there. Supposedly Alex Schoenbaum bought the rights to the trademark for the south and we did have at least two of them (Warwick and Hampton) back in the day. As I said in an earlier post, they were our "Mel's" as we drove the hot rods (or dad's car) from one to the other all night long and hung with our friends there. Might have sipped a brew or two, but not me, of course! They left, however, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3190/is_v1… and now run a chain of family places. Cheers! Richard— December 11, 2009 12:49 p.m.
The Anti-Sonic Burger
re# 71--surfpuppy: Thanks for the update. Itis nice when something stays in the family over generations if it is kept up. Some place in San Diego did a vote-off the other day on a blog or something I read that compared Hodad's to another place there. Both of them sounded great to me! Also, they said that Hodad's was right on the beach, and that always adds a little something to a place. Here where I live we have a pretty sleazy Holiday Inn on the beach, but a burger and a cold one while sitting outside at their Tiki Hut looking at the sand and surf are pretty tasty. I look forward to trying Hodad's.— November 5, 2009 1:12 p.m.
The Anti-Sonic Burger
Oh, forgot. In VA where I grew up, Bob's was Shoney's Big Boy, and it was our Mel's (American Graffiti) as we hung out there in our cars. We had two, and we drove from one to the other constantly on the weekends. Food was OK--Big Boy was a cousin to a Big Mac, only made with actual food as I remember. Cheers!— November 5, 2009 11:36 a.m.
The Anti-Sonic Burger
Sonic: In South Florida the one I ate at was very, very bad. Never again. Checkers: As mentioned before, this is the FL version of Rally's Carls, Jr: I ate at one in CA years ago, and went to school in NC where Hardee's started--actually, I was in school when Hardee's started. I saw little that led me to believe they were the same, but they certainly could have merged since I ate there. Carls was pretty bad. Hardee's was decent in those days-we ate the Hardee's Husky, which was like a Whopper but better, but his was in the '60s, so who knows. I remember when Arby's opened across the street from Hardee's. They actually served real roast beef in those days, at least for the first year or so. After that, it became whatever it is today and we stopped going. In 'n Out: As many times as I have been to CA I have not yet eaten there. Probably because I was on expenses and we went to real restaurants. One day I will try it as my brother now lives near San Diego--Escondido, I think it is. I would like to try Hodad's and that other place it was compared to the other day--a bar, basically, with fresh burgers rather than frozen like at Hodad's. San Diego sounds like a great place to do a burger week! I can't wait to come out there again.— November 5, 2009 11:32 a.m.