***Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- Be-Bop The Adventure Car Hop- With Johnny Ace In Mind

 

Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which graced each CD compilation in The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series that I recently reviewed. The golden age of the automobile meets the golden age of al fresco dining, okay, okay pre-Big Mac dining. Sorry, I got carried away. And once I have put automobile and teen dining out together all that needs to be added is that Eddie is out, out once again, with his ever lovin’ Ginny in the Clintondale 1950s be-bop teen night, having a little something to eat after a hard teen dance and a bout of down in the Adamsville beach “submarine race” watching night.

“Two hamburgers, all the trimmings, two fries, two Cokes, Sissy,” rasped half-whispering Eddie Connell to Adventure Car Hop primo car hop (and ex-Eddie girlfriend back in junior high days when he learned a thing or two about girls, about girl charms and girl bewilderments), Sissy Jordan. For those who know not of Adventure Car Hops or car hops in general here is a quick primer. Adventure Car Hop is nothing but an old time drive-in restaurant where the car hop takes your order from you while you are sitting in your “boss” car (hopefully boss car, although the lot this night is filled with dads’ borrowed cars, strictly not boss, not boss at all) with your “boss” girl ( you had better call her that or next week she will be somebody else’s boss honey) personally and returns after, well, depends on how busy it is, and right now this in Adventure Car Hop busy time, with your order.

Now Sissy, a little older than most Clintondale car hops at twenty-two, is really nothing but a career waitress, a foxy one still, but a career waitress which is all a car hop really is. Except most are "slumming” through senior-hood at Clintondale High or some local college and are just trying to make some extra money for this and that while being beautiful. Because, and there is no scientific proof for this, but none is needed in any case, at Adventure Car Hop in the year 1962 every car hop is a fox (that beautiful just mentioned), a double fox on some nights, in their short shorts, tight blouses, and funny-shaped box hats.

And in the 1962 teen be-bop night, the teen be-bop Friday or Saturday night those foxes are magnets for every guy with a car, fathers’ car or not, without girls hoping against hope for a moment with one said car hop, and guys with girls who are looking to show off their girls, foxier even than the car hops if that is possible and usually isn’t although do not under any conditions let them know that, and, more importantly, their boss cars. And playing, playing loudly for all to hear their souped-up car radio complexes, turned nightly in rock heaven’s WJDA, the radio station choice of every teen under the age of twenty-one. And right now on Eddie's super-duplex speaker combo The Dell-Vikings are singing their hit, Black Slacks and some walkers (yes, some guys and girls, some lame guys and girls, walk to Adventure to grab something to eat after the Clintondale Majestic Theater lets out. They, of course, eat at the thoughtfully provided picnic tables although their orders are still taken by Sissy’s brigade) are crooning along to the tune. Nicely, although they are still nothing but lamos in the teen night social order.

But, getting back to Eddie and Ginny, see Sissy knows something that you and I don’t know just by the way Eddie placed his order as The Falcon’s doo wop serenade, Your So Fine, blares away from his radio in the Clintondale teen night. Sissy knows because, being a fox she has had plenty of experience (including with Eddie in the days, the junior high days when she and Eddie were nothing but walkers) that Eddie and Ginny (who was nothing but a stick when Eddie and she were an item, a stick being a girl, a twelve or thirteen year old junior high school girl with no shape, unlike say Sissy who did have a shape, although no question, no question even to Sissy Ginny has a shape now, not as good as her’s but a shape good enough to keep Eddie snagged) have been "doing it” after the spending the early evening at the Surf, the local rock dance hall for those over twenty-one (and where is liquor is served). The tip-off: Eddie’s request for all the trimmings on his hamburgers. All the trimmings in this case being mustard, ketchup, pickles, lettuce, and here is the clincher, onions. Yes, Eddie and Ginny are done with love’s chores for the evening and can now revert to primal culinary needs without rancor, or concern.

Sissy had to laugh at how ritualized (although she would never use such a word herself to describe what was going on) the teen night life was in Clintondale (and really just slightly older teens like the clients of the Surf rock club, Eddie and Ginny, who learned the ropes at Adventure Car Hop way back when). If a couple came early, say eight o’clock they never ordered onions, no way, the night still held too much promise. The walkers, well, the walkers you couldn’t tell, especially the young walkers like she and Eddie in the old days, but usually they didn’t have enough sense to say “no onions.” And then there were the Eddies and Ginnys floating in around two, or three in the morning, done (and you know what done is now), starving, maybe a little drunk and ready to devour Benny’s (the owner of Adventure) cardboard hamburgers, deep-fried, fat-saturated French fries, and diluted soda (known locally as tonic, go figure) as long as those burgers had onions, many onions on them. And as we turn off this scene to the strains of Johnny Ace crooning Pledging My Love on Eddie’s car radio competing just now with a car further over with The Elegants’ Little Star Sissy has just place the car tray on Eddie’s side of the car and brought the order and placed it on the tray, with all the trimmings.