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The Road Trip Not Taken.
Mar. 25th, 2015 10:03 pmA few times a year, I get on the road for combinations of work, family, friendships and events. Other times, I just think out the details of such a trip and find the thought process is a trip in itself. On the home stretch two weekends ago, I got into such Thinking, when I saw the every-ten-mile signs for the Ultimate Destinations on the Thruway and realized that Montreal is actually closer to New York City than Buffalo is- at least when you drive it via the 90-degree turn created by the 87 north and the 90 west.
It'd be fun sometime, staying straight at the split on the way back from NYC and heading to Montreal. Maybe if the city ever got back baseball. Or just to see some of the friends we've met over the years through this outlet. Plus, other Sirens (of the non-police variety) call out as well, on the road to and then on the Northway:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
audacian and bluevicksen11 and their awesome families are around the Capital; there is summer music at Saratoga; and, an odd bucket list item for me that I remembered seeing one of the North Of Here signs on I-87, two of the few remaining Howard Johnson's resturants in the whole country are in the famed Lake towns of George and Placid on the way to the Frenchish border.
Except now there is but one:
One of the three Howard Johnson’s restaurants still in business has been sold and will close after a nearly 60-year run in Lake Placid, N.Y. Mike Butler said his family-run restaurant was bought by local restaurant owners who plan to move their own business to the property after the Howard Johnson’s closes on Tuesday. Mr. Butler’s father, Ron, opened the restaurant with the chain’s signature orange roof 58 years ago. Two other HoJos still operate. One is attached to a hotel in Bangor, Me., and the other is in Lake George, a tourist destination 60 miles south of Lake Placid.
That's all the Times could tell of the legacy in today's online edition. No mention of the memories, or of the money-hungry mishigas that ruined one of this country's oldest roadside legacies.
----
I predate most fast food.
McDonalds was a relatively still-rare arrival in the East when I was a kid; you had to go one town over to Levittown, or one to the northwest on Old Country Road, to experience their pre-Ronald fare. (I drove by that latter one earlier this month, and it's been preserved or at least retrofitted to its old-school 60s Golden Arches look.) Burger King didn't arrive until the 70s, Wendy's not until even later. Chain pizzerias and sit-down joints ranged from mostly local to nonexistent. The still-new superhighways tended to their own odd chains (anybody remember Hot Shoppes?) if they even had anything that wasn't a vending machine full of sandwiches of recent vintages. And yet one name, and symbol, was there back then, and stands out for it even now:
Howard Johnson was right!
Right off the highway, whether the one upstate to my sister's, or the one to my other sister's in-laws in Pennsylvania, or any of the other occasional roadies we'd take at times. The symbol on the sign was of Simple Simon handing off his wares, but the better known and easier seen one was the orange roof. It stood for comfort, and reliability, and home away from home.
While almost every HoJos I ever saw was of the same cookie-cutter design, every one proudly called out its town name in a stone-carved sign next to the front entrance. NEWBURGH. LIBERTY. That town right over the Delaware Water Gap bridge into PA, which I can picture perfectly except for the damn town name. Each with what you knew, if not what you wanted. All with some quirks: the house brand, indeed the only brand, on order was HoJo Cola; an order of "a Coke" or "Pepsi" would get you a rebuke from the waitress. (Legend told of the big cola companies employing undercover Secret Shoppers, out to sue the chain if an order of the trademarked beverage brought anything else to the table.) Some, by my college years, became regular rest stops for the buses that shuttled us to and from campus at break times; that familiarity would carry over once we were self-propelled, and our Pintos and Mavericks would return to the one just north of Binghamton off I-81, among others.
The food wasn't the best or the cheapest, but was close enough to each for the added comfort to be worth it. The menu was limited but uniform; all-you-can-eat nights were often on, but usually with things like fried clams which didn't appeal as much to the kid, teen or undergrad. But always, there was the ice cream. Mel Brooks famously made fun of it in 1974's Blazing Saddles while the chain was still at least close to its pop-culture peak:
It was up to 28 flavors by the time the empire was at its biggest- but thanks to changes in attitudes and ownership, it wasn't long before the flavors outnumbered the locations.
----
There really was a Howard Johnson- and not just the one who went on to play for the Mets. Supposedly, Howard the Third was my age, and lived in the same Harvard dorm as the one guy from my graduating class who got in there. But by our junior year, it had reached Howard's end:
Howard Johnson's was sold by the founder's son to British conglomerate Imperial Group in 1980, for more than $630 million dollars. An effort with new management teams, new restaurant concepts and millions of dollars failed to rejuvenate the chain. Some of the new restaurant concepts started under Imperial's ownership include Bumbershoot's, Chatt's and Deli Baker Ice Cream Maker. Also, hotels called 3 Penny Inns failed to catch on. Nonetheless, in 1985, Imperial sold the company, except for "Ground Round," to Marriott Corporation. Marriott's interest was in the restaurant locations, which it planned to convert to its own concepts.
Which, mostly, it did- leaving few remaining by the time we moved here in 1994. One had been within a brisk walk of this house, at Main and Kensington, and switched to a local diner-food concept before getting bulldozed for mostly medical offices. The other, at the southern gateway to the city off the 90, was briefly the Nickel City Cafe before fading into oblivion.
Some held on in unexpected places. There was a HoJos at Hollywood and Vine, where the tour buses stopped on my only ever visit out there in 1980. It's unrecognizable now. Likewise, we visited the one that held on in Times Square until 2005, victimized by rising rents and the need for the Next Big Thing.
----
Maybe the orange roof was just slightly ahead of its time. It's strange seeing so many national chain names in the heart of Manhattan now, often cobbled onto existing buildings. Both our hotel from February (a Best Western) and my visiting friends' from last month (a Marriott Courtyard) are selling the same senses of familiarity and name recognition, even in the heart of downtown Sodom & Gomorrah, that HoJo restaurants made a name off decades before. In the end, they just didn't have enough clams to sustain it- all-you-can-eat or otherwise.
The re-Maine-ing one in Bangor is a bit too fah off my radah (and supposedly doesn't even have the distinctive top anymore), but the Lake George location is right off I-87 on the way to Quebec. Supposedly it still has the orange roof and everything; and it's not far from Dr. Morbid's Haunted House.
Bring Hedgefund, Kevin; I'm pretty sure kids still eat free;)
It'd be fun sometime, staying straight at the split on the way back from NYC and heading to Montreal. Maybe if the city ever got back baseball. Or just to see some of the friends we've met over the years through this outlet. Plus, other Sirens (of the non-police variety) call out as well, on the road to and then on the Northway:
audacian and bluevicksen11 and their awesome families are around the Capital; there is summer music at Saratoga; and, an odd bucket list item for me that I remembered seeing one of the North Of Here signs on I-87, two of the few remaining Howard Johnson's resturants in the whole country are in the famed Lake towns of George and Placid on the way to the Frenchish border.Except now there is but one:
One of the three Howard Johnson’s restaurants still in business has been sold and will close after a nearly 60-year run in Lake Placid, N.Y. Mike Butler said his family-run restaurant was bought by local restaurant owners who plan to move their own business to the property after the Howard Johnson’s closes on Tuesday. Mr. Butler’s father, Ron, opened the restaurant with the chain’s signature orange roof 58 years ago. Two other HoJos still operate. One is attached to a hotel in Bangor, Me., and the other is in Lake George, a tourist destination 60 miles south of Lake Placid.
That's all the Times could tell of the legacy in today's online edition. No mention of the memories, or of the money-hungry mishigas that ruined one of this country's oldest roadside legacies.
----
I predate most fast food.
McDonalds was a relatively still-rare arrival in the East when I was a kid; you had to go one town over to Levittown, or one to the northwest on Old Country Road, to experience their pre-Ronald fare. (I drove by that latter one earlier this month, and it's been preserved or at least retrofitted to its old-school 60s Golden Arches look.) Burger King didn't arrive until the 70s, Wendy's not until even later. Chain pizzerias and sit-down joints ranged from mostly local to nonexistent. The still-new superhighways tended to their own odd chains (anybody remember Hot Shoppes?) if they even had anything that wasn't a vending machine full of sandwiches of recent vintages. And yet one name, and symbol, was there back then, and stands out for it even now:
Howard Johnson was right!
Right off the highway, whether the one upstate to my sister's, or the one to my other sister's in-laws in Pennsylvania, or any of the other occasional roadies we'd take at times. The symbol on the sign was of Simple Simon handing off his wares, but the better known and easier seen one was the orange roof. It stood for comfort, and reliability, and home away from home.
While almost every HoJos I ever saw was of the same cookie-cutter design, every one proudly called out its town name in a stone-carved sign next to the front entrance. NEWBURGH. LIBERTY. That town right over the Delaware Water Gap bridge into PA, which I can picture perfectly except for the damn town name. Each with what you knew, if not what you wanted. All with some quirks: the house brand, indeed the only brand, on order was HoJo Cola; an order of "a Coke" or "Pepsi" would get you a rebuke from the waitress. (Legend told of the big cola companies employing undercover Secret Shoppers, out to sue the chain if an order of the trademarked beverage brought anything else to the table.) Some, by my college years, became regular rest stops for the buses that shuttled us to and from campus at break times; that familiarity would carry over once we were self-propelled, and our Pintos and Mavericks would return to the one just north of Binghamton off I-81, among others.
The food wasn't the best or the cheapest, but was close enough to each for the added comfort to be worth it. The menu was limited but uniform; all-you-can-eat nights were often on, but usually with things like fried clams which didn't appeal as much to the kid, teen or undergrad. But always, there was the ice cream. Mel Brooks famously made fun of it in 1974's Blazing Saddles while the chain was still at least close to its pop-culture peak:
It was up to 28 flavors by the time the empire was at its biggest- but thanks to changes in attitudes and ownership, it wasn't long before the flavors outnumbered the locations.
----
There really was a Howard Johnson- and not just the one who went on to play for the Mets. Supposedly, Howard the Third was my age, and lived in the same Harvard dorm as the one guy from my graduating class who got in there. But by our junior year, it had reached Howard's end:
Howard Johnson's was sold by the founder's son to British conglomerate Imperial Group in 1980, for more than $630 million dollars. An effort with new management teams, new restaurant concepts and millions of dollars failed to rejuvenate the chain. Some of the new restaurant concepts started under Imperial's ownership include Bumbershoot's, Chatt's and Deli Baker Ice Cream Maker. Also, hotels called 3 Penny Inns failed to catch on. Nonetheless, in 1985, Imperial sold the company, except for "Ground Round," to Marriott Corporation. Marriott's interest was in the restaurant locations, which it planned to convert to its own concepts.
Which, mostly, it did- leaving few remaining by the time we moved here in 1994. One had been within a brisk walk of this house, at Main and Kensington, and switched to a local diner-food concept before getting bulldozed for mostly medical offices. The other, at the southern gateway to the city off the 90, was briefly the Nickel City Cafe before fading into oblivion.
Some held on in unexpected places. There was a HoJos at Hollywood and Vine, where the tour buses stopped on my only ever visit out there in 1980. It's unrecognizable now. Likewise, we visited the one that held on in Times Square until 2005, victimized by rising rents and the need for the Next Big Thing.
----
Maybe the orange roof was just slightly ahead of its time. It's strange seeing so many national chain names in the heart of Manhattan now, often cobbled onto existing buildings. Both our hotel from February (a Best Western) and my visiting friends' from last month (a Marriott Courtyard) are selling the same senses of familiarity and name recognition, even in the heart of downtown Sodom & Gomorrah, that HoJo restaurants made a name off decades before. In the end, they just didn't have enough clams to sustain it- all-you-can-eat or otherwise.
The re-Maine-ing one in Bangor is a bit too fah off my radah (and supposedly doesn't even have the distinctive top anymore), but the Lake George location is right off I-87 on the way to Quebec. Supposedly it still has the orange roof and everything; and it's not far from Dr. Morbid's Haunted House.
Bring Hedgefund, Kevin; I'm pretty sure kids still eat free;)