***Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- Be-Bop The Adventure Car Hop

 

 

A YouTube film clip of Johnny Ace performing his classic Pledging My Love.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

No question if you were alive in the 1950s in America, and maybe in other countries too for all I know but I think that this is truly an American phenomenon, the golden age of the   automobile  met the golden age of  al fresco dining, okay, okay low end pre-Big Mac dining. Sorry, I got carried away. Golden Age eating outdoors, well, not really outdoors but in your Golden Age automobile at the local drive-in restaurant (not drive through but that may have been true too). See the idea was that a young guy, maybe a guy who was a wiz at fixing up cars and who had retro-fitted, dual carb-fitted, low-slung wheels-fitted, amp-fitted some broken down wreak and made it a “boss” car, like a ‘57 Chevy or Dodge or some nerdy young guy who had two left hands and had borrowed his father’s blah-blah family car for the night would bring his date to the drive-in restaurant and did not give a damn about the cuisine or the ambience against sitting in that car all private and all to munch on burgers and fries. And be seen in that “boss” car or in the case of the father borrowed car just to be seen with his date. Be seen by the million and one young guys, maybe guys who were also wizzes at fixing up cars and who had also retro-fitted, dual carb-fitted, low-slung wheels-fitted, amp-fitted some broken down wreak and made it a “boss” car, like a ‘57 Chevy or ‘59 Dodge or some nerdy young guys who had two left hands and had borrowed their father’s blah-blah family car for the night would bring their dates to the drive-in restaurant and did not give a damn about the cuisine or the ambience against sitting in those cars all private and all to munch on burgers and fries. Also to be seen and to be placed in the high school pecking order accordingly. Or if not in high school to be paid homage for surviving that chore, and for knowing the ropes, knowing the signposts in the drive-in night.     

Once I have put golden age automobile and golden age dining out together all that needs to be added is that Eddie, Eddie Connell, is out, out once again, with his ever lovin’ Ginny, Virginia Stone, in the Clintondale 1950s be-bop night, having a little something to eat at the Adventure Car Hop, that burgers and fries eternal teen night dining combo (did I mention a Coke or Pepsi, if I did not then those were the standard drinks to wash those hard-hearted burgers and those fat-saturated fries down) after a hard night of dancing to the local rockers and afterward a bout down at Adamsville Beach located a couple of towns over and so filled with Clintondale and other young couple seeking some privacy from watchful town eyes, in the “submarine race” watching night. Let’s hone in on what Eddie and Ginny are up to, okay.  

“Two hamburgers, all the trimmings, two fries, two Cokes, Sissy,” rasped half-whispering Eddie Connell to Adventure Car Hop number one primo car hop Sissy Jordan. Eddie and Sissy had known each other forever. Sissy had been Eddie’s girlfriend back in junior high days, back in eight-grade at Clintondale South Junior High when he learned a thing or two about girls, about girl charms and girl bewilderments. And Sissy had been his instructor, although like all such early bracings with the opposite sex there was as much misinformation and confusion as intimacy since nobody, no parent, no teacher, and no preacher was cluing any kids in, except some lame talk about the birds and the bees, kids’ stuff. Things, as happens all the time in teen love, had not worked out between them. Had not worked out as well because by ninth grade blossoming Sissy was to be found sitting in the front seat of senior football halfback Jimmy Jenkin’s two-toned souped-up Hudson and Sissy had no time for mere boys then. Such is life.   

For those who know not of Adventure Car Hop places or car hops here is a quick primer. The Adventure Car Hop, the only such place in town and therefore a magnet for everybody from about twelve to twenty-something was (now long gone and the site of a small office park)  nothing but an old time drive-in restaurant where the car hop took your order from you while you were  sitting in your “boss” car. Hopefully boss car, although the lot the night Eddie and Ginny graced the place had been filled with dads’ borrowed cars, strictly not boss, not boss at all.  Sitting with your “boss” girl (you had better have called her that or the next week she would be somebody else’s “boss” honey) personally. And would return to you after, well, it depended on how busy it was, and just then right this was Adventure Car Hop busy time, with your order on a tray which attached to your door. By the way families, parents alone without children, or anybody else over twenty-something either gave the place a wide berth or only went there during the day when no self-respecting young person, with or without car or date, would be seen dead there, certainly not to eat the food. Jesus no. 

Now Sissy, a little older then than most Clintondale car hops at twenty-two, was is really nothing but a career waitress, a foxy one still, but a waitress which was all a car hop really was. Except most car hops at Adventure Car Hop were "slumming” through senior-hood at Clintondale High or freshman at some local college and were just trying to make some extra money for this and that while being beautiful. Because, and there was no scientific proof for this, but none was needed, at Adventure Car Hop in the year 1959 every car hop had been a fox (that beautiful just mentioned), a double fox on some nights, in their short shorts, tight blouses, and funny-shaped box hats. And Sissy topped the list. Here though is where Sissy made a wrong turn. She had let Jimmy Jenkins have his way with her too many times, too many unprotected times and when she was a senior at Clintondale High a few years back (and Jimmy was up at State U playing football and having sex with a few adoring college girlfriends on the side) she had to drop out of school to have a baby (we called it “gone to Aunt Ella’s” and once a girl was not seen for a while someone would use that term and that was all that was needed). But see Jimmy, caddish Jimmy, left Sissy in the lurch, would not marry her or provide for the child (what the hell he was a student he had no dough even if he had done the honorable thing) and so she never went back to finish up after that visit to Aunt Ella and had latched onto the job at Adventure Car Hop to support her child. And thus all the signs told that  career waitress was to be her fate, maybe not at that place but probably she would wind up at some truck stop diner on the outside of town with a too tight steam-sweated uniform, pencil in her hair, gum in her mouth, still fending off, mostly fending off, lonesome trucker advances.          

But back to the 1959 be-bop night, the be-bop Friday or Saturday night when those car hops, those foxes, were magnets for every guy with a car, a fathers’ car or not but without girls hoping against hope for a moment with one said car hop. And for guys with girls who were looking to show off their girls, foxier even than the car hops if that was possible and it usually wasn’t. Although under any conditions do not let them know that. More importantly, to show off their “boss cars.” And playing, playing loudly for all within one hundred yards to hear, their souped-up car radio complexes, turned nightly in rock heaven’s WJDA, the radio station choice of everyone under the age of thirty.

Right now on Eddie's super-duplex speaker combo The Dell-Vikings are singing their hit, Black Slacks and some walkers are crooning along to the tune. Yes, if you can believe this, some guys and girls, some lame guys and girls, actually walked to the Adventure Car Hop to grab something to eat after the Clintondale Majestic Theater let out. They, of course, ate at the thoughtfully provided picnic tables although their orders were still taken by Sissy’s brigade. Nicely served just like real customers with nighttime social standing, although they were still nothing but lamos in the 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, blared away from his radio in the fading 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 lamo car-less 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 hers but a shape good enough to keep Eddie snagged) have been "doing it” after  spending the early part of the evening at the Surf, the local rock dance hall for those over twenty-one (and where 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 set 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 tray on Eddie’s side of the car and has brought his order and placed it on the tray, with all the trimmings.