Fast Food from the 1960’s

Today it’s McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, Hardee’s and Carls Jr, and many more but back in the 60’s Wichita had a couple of really great fast food concepts that were truly awesome.  One was Sizzlin Dogs, these were little stores that were strictly for take out.  I don’t think more than a couple of customers could be inside at a time.  I don’t think Drive Thru had been invented yet.   The hot dogs were on one of those things that turns and has dogs stuck on sharp sticks.  The thing that made these so special was the bun…It was the kind that looked like the top of a loaf of bread…it was split at the top and it was grilled on both sides with butter.  The hot dog fit in between the two pieces of bread and then all the condiments were added and finally they added salt and pepper.  These could have cheese, onions, tomatoes, relish, chili, mustard and catsup on them.

It was an incredible fast food experience.  The other concept was called NuWay Burgers.  Instead of a patty there was cooked ground beef.  They would put a scoop of this ground beef mixture on the bun and then you would have different condiments on it.  Loved them.  Not sloppy joes… just ground hamburger.  I don’t know if these have survived but when I was growing up in Wichita I enjoyed both of these concepts.

Foods I Grew Up On

At this point I think I should share some of the special delectable snacks that I ate as a kid. Honestly, today, to let your children eat some of these things might be considered irresponsible or possibly child endangerment.  Regardless, I ate this stuff, it was much tastier than my daily vitamin capsule and even though I don’t enjoy these things today I remember them fondly.  First a piece of bread slathered with peanut butter then you dump a bunch of sugar on one end and tip the bread so that the sugar goes across the face of the bread leaving lots of sugar on the way.  Shake the piece of bread to get rid of any loose sugar.   Then eat it.  (Is there sugar in peanut butter?)  No matter, the next delight is a piece of bread with butter on it covered with grape jelly…. enjoy.  Eating packages of Kool Aid.  What a rush.  Then there was my favorite dessert.  Pour a can of fruit cocktail into an ice cube tray then add cream cheese and freeze.  Eat the cubes or cut the frozen treat into squares.  Don’t knock it until you try it.  I mentioned this to my children and to this day they have refused to try it.  They don’t know what they are missing.  Honestly, I don’t know if they even know what fruit cocktail is.  It was a staple in our house and showed up on the line consistently for those school lunches I liked.

Finally we used to grind bologna and sweet gherkin pickles through a crank meat grinder add mayonnaise and you have a wonderful sandwich spread.  Two pieces of bread, with this mixture in the middle and some lettuce.  You will be craving more.  I am sure there is little food value in any of this but as I remember it they were all great to eat.

One final thing are my mother’s Sloppy Joes.  One of the few things that she made that I loved then and still love now.  Take a 12” fry pan… cook up at least a pound of hamburger… at the same time cook a bunch of chopped white onions.  Once the hamburger is cooked, drain the grease, add the onions, a can of Campbells Chicken Gumbo Soup, a liberal portion of catsup and a liberal portion of mustard, mix all the ingredients together, heat and simmer for 5 minutes.  The amount of catsup and mustard is entirely up to you.  I try to balance them until I find the taste that I like.  Spoon this on to hamburger buns and enjoy.  These can be served as sandwiches or open faced on a plate to eat with a fork.  You will not be disappointed and these will become your new favorite sloppy joes.

A Case of Wheaties

I grew up in a home where we were always financially challenged.  Don’t get me wrong we had a roof over our head and plenty to eat.  My mother would go to the grocery store and being on a tight budget meant that her choices were limited to the most food for the least amount of money which resulted in her buying mostly off brands or generic brands.  The most notable of these was our breakfast cereal.  She would always buy these big bags of cereals that were made to look like the real thing.  Fake Cheerios, fake Fruit Loops, fake corn flakes and so on.  They had names that suggested the real thing but they simply weren’t like the branded stuff.  At least I don’t think so because I never got the real thing.  One day we were driving downtown and came on a big truck full of boxes.  It hadn’t been packed that well and the boxes were moving around.  For some reason, maybe the truck hit a bump in the road or something… I am not sure what, but one of the boxes fell off the truck.  The driver wasn’t aware of this and kept going.  My dad stopped the car, got out, and picked up the box.  It was a case of Wheaties. Oh my god… The Real Thing.  There were 24 boxes in the case.  We ate Wheaties for quite a while and I can vouch for the fact that they were better than their generic counterpart.   I know the box didn’t fall out of the sky but it was very fortunate for us that the case happened to fall off the truck just when we happened to be following.  I guess in some ways I lived a charmed life.

A Few More Food References

I have been dealing mostly with fast food and home snacks, but I think I should mention a more upscale experience.  The place I want to talk about is the Lazy R.  You could dine in and be waited on.  Two key factors in the reference  “more upscale”.  As I recall it had a very limited menu.  Hamburger Steaks (Chopped Sirloin) cooked the way you liked them, a green salad with what I thought was great French Dressing and French Fries.(seems almost like International Cuisine)  It is the only meal I ever remember having at the Lazy R, but oh so good.  You have to remember my frame of reference included  my mother’s tasteless offerings, school lunches that I liked, and fast food, so the bar was set pretty low.

Finally the restaurant where my friends and I spent the most time…. Kings X.  They had several locations.  As I recall our favorite was the largest one on a street named Oliver.  It was really just a hash house and was open 24 hours a day.  The crown jewel on the menu was their “5 Star Breakfast”.  This had eggs, breakfast meat, potatoes, toast and pancakes (get it, 5 Star… we always thought they should make it a 6 Star and include coffee),  A lot of food and at a great price.  As I recall the 5 Star only set you back around $2.  You had to add coffee with unlimited refills which we constantly pushed to the limit.  We were able to solve most of the world’s problems over a 5 Star breakfast during those marathon meals.  I don’t think that the waitresses really appreciated our business.  I remember on one occasion we sat down and the waitress literally threw the menus at our table.  She didn’t realize that we didn’t need menus.  After all it would ultimately come down to the 5 Star.