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DRIVE-IN SUMMERS  The new Cross Roads BBQ & Drive-in was brightly lighted on opening night in January 1952. Built on the site of the original Cross Roads, the "outdoor" diner was at the foot of West Cliff Drive, two blocks from the Wharf, three blocks from the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, Calif. The Cross Roads was so named because four streets come together there. |
WORKING AT THE FAMILY DRIVE-IN DINER
Washing dishes, peeling
spuds, ogling carhops
By LEN KLEMPNAUER
of TheColumnists.com
“When your
parents own a taqueria,” the savvy young Latino comic winced
on TV’s Comedy Channel, “you’re born into slavery.”
Tell me about it.
Anyone whose folks have operated any type of mom-and-pop eatery
surely will concur that the only reason their parents had children
in the first place was to put them to work, and the sooner the
better. Child labor laws apparently don’t pertain to offspring
--at least in the food service business.
From 1947 to 1960, my family owned and operated a restaurant--the
Cross Roads BBQ & Drive-In--in the summer beach resort city
of Santa Cruz, Calif., about 75 miles south of San Francisco.
When I say "drive-in," I don't mean the movie drive-ins,
which still exist in many places nationwide, although not so
abundantly as in the Fifties. I mean the drive-in restaurant,
which were found in every nook and cranny of America in the 1950s.
(For the edification of those under age 50, customers at drive-in
restaurants ate in their vehicles and were served by waitresses
called carhops who toted food and drinks on aluminum trays that
they attached to car windows.)
At the Cross Roads, summer vacations for me, starting at age
12 in 1949, meant washing dishes and peeling potatoes. A dishwasher
then required two words (dish washer) and a real human being,
not a machine. And potatoes then were hand-peeled and sliced
into strips to deep fry into the pyramids of french fries that
accompanied the hamburgers and hot dogs and milk shakes and Cokes
for customers to enjoy in their cars.
Milk shakes came in tall glass receptacles and soft drinks in
shorter ones (neither in paper containers), coffee in heavy-duty
mugs (not Styrofoam cups) and food on industrial-strength dishes
(no paper or plastic plates), accompanied by stainless steel
cutlery (Heaven forbid any flimsy plastic knives, forks and spoons).
It was the Age of Re-using. Recycle and disposable were words
I had never heard. Everything was hand-washed and hand-dried
and used over and over until broken or stolen. Ketchup still
came in bottles, sugar in jars, cream in creamers, and salt and
pepper in shakers (none in tiny paper or plastic packets). Those
mealtime accoutrements had to be cleaned daily, too, and refilled.
By age 14, my experience as a dish washer and potato peeler had
somehow qualified me to be promoted to soda jerk. A soda jerk
created those milk shakes and other assorted ice cream concoctions.
Remember the root beer float? The malted milk shake? The ice
cream soda? Their glass receptacles also had to be washed, and
my new title didn’t exempt me from my earlier responsibilities
of cleaning dishes and shaving spuds.
I don’t know how yours came about, but I swear the oh-my-aching-back
syndrome that plagues so many of us harks back to my hours of
bending over sinks and 20-gallon cans that caught the flying
potato skins when I was a teenager. (Note: During my Army basic
training days almost 10 years later, I reigned as the ace of
the potato peelers while on KP.)
At 16, I was upgraded to cook’s helper. Translated, cook’s
helper meant I did a lot of chopping and cutting and slicing
and dicing and, in general, gofer-ing at the beck and call of
the fry cook. Diners employed fry cooks, not chefs, because most
meat was fried on the grill or in a pan or deep-fried in a vat
of scorching hot cooking oil.
The promotion to cook’s helper arrived about the time my
first driver’s license arrived. Unfortunately for my love
life, I was switched to the night shift and my newly purchased
‘37 Ford, which cost a grand total of $100, was rendered
useless as a make-out machine. (Making out then meant necking
only, leaving us young fellows always stranded at first base.)
My “steady”--do teens go steady today?--worked the
lunch shift Monday through Friday at an upscale restaurant. So
our contact was measured in the few minutes we could get together
in the afternoon before I went to work. On Tuesday nights, my
day off, we could actually go out together.
My six-night work week ran from 4 p.m. to midnight on weeknights
and Sundays. My hours were 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. on Friday and Saturday
nights to cater to what restaurateurs called “the bar crowd.”
On Memorial Day, July Fourth and Labor Day holidays, particularly
when they were part of a three-day weekend, and throughout August,
those Friday and Saturday nights lasted until 7 a.m. the next
day when I would greet my parents when they arrived for their
day shift.
I did get a pay raise, from $10 to $20 a week. The minimum wage
applied only to real employes, never to family members. Overtime
didn’t add up either.
There was a side benefit, however. I met a lot of carhops. Carhops
were usually pretty, charismatic high school girls and, occasionally,
beautiful, sexy older women of 20 or so. Lucky that I got to
meet them, for I was hidden away in a kitchen with scant chance
of meeting the out-of-town girls who had come to Santa Cruz to
play on the beaches or on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk or to play
around with local guys. That didn’t matter much when I was
going steady but it certainly did the next summer when I wasn’t.
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very fast on her feet--or else wear roller skates. |
A certain mystique surrounded carhops in the minds of teenaged boys. Maybe the uniforms were what drove droves of boys to drive in to the drive-ins. What ever their appeal, carhops could bewitch the tips out of males of any age.
Carhopping was a highly sought-after job for high school girls, for their tips were about as good as it could get for otherwise unskilled young female workers in those days. One carhop I dated, a Santa Cruz High School classmate, once told me she made $35 in tips one Sunday afternoon in 1952. That’s $35 without any deductions. In 2005, that $35 would have amounted to about $250--for six hours work on the day shift.
But carhopping at night brought in the big money. Another carhop remembered getting tipped $90 one Saturday night in the summer of 1958. That calculated to $590 in 2005, although it was for an eight-hour shift. That’s close to $75 per hour.
On the downside for excited teenaged boys,
almost all carhops had boyfriends, usually strong, muscular boyfriends
lurking unobtrusively somewhere in their cars like camouflaged
snipers ready to mow down any enemy encroaching on their territory.
One carhop in particular comes to mind. Let’s call her Dixie
The Endowed. Dixie didn’t just carry trays stacked with
food and drinks to her customers. She flounced from car to car
with a tray deftly balanced above her head, chin up, shoulders
squared and back arched like a high-fashion model parading down
the runway.
Just the slightest wiggle made Dixie jiggle.
However the word spread when Dixie was on duty, the grapevine
functioned at its peak when she was carhopping, drawing scores
of young fellows who kept her prancing continually with re-order
after re-order of burgers and colas on what otherwise might have
been a slow night for business. For some reason, the guys seldom
were accompanied by their girlfriends. Maybe it was the girls’
choice. Maybe they felt they didn’t measure up against Dixie.
Dixie only carhopped one summer and never told me what her biggest
haul in tips was, although I’m sure she knew precisely the
impact she made on those frustrated young fellows who were emptying
their wallets so she’d strut her stuff their way. I do remember
that her boyfriend spent exactly the same hours on guard at the
Cross Roads that she spent hopping cars. I always wondered whether
he had a job of his own.
Dixie was for real, although my knowledge never came first-hand.
Since there were no plastic containers for food or drink or condiments
then, I’d guess there was no silicone being used to distort
or enlarge reality either.
Drive-ins were where teens hung out in the Fifties, whether locals
or tourists. Greasers and nerds, surfers and beach girls, jocks
and cheerleaders, socials and loners, leaders and losers--you
could find some of each at the drive-ins.
Santa Cruz boasted two drive-ins in the Fifties--the Cross Roads
on the west side and the 5-Spot, which belonged to a small chain
of five Central California drive-ins, on the east side. During
the school year after high school games or dances or an evening
at the movies, most teens frequented one or the other and usually
both.
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Teens out for a night of excitement routinely piloted their hot rods or parents’ sedans in an endless parade back and forth between the two outdoor diners. Their route took them up and down our main street, Pacific Avenue, and, in the summer, also along Beach Street, where the Boardwalk is located. The nightly ritual was called cruisin’ the drag, the drag being Pacific Avenue.
Marilyn Dolezal, a classmate of mine in the Santa Cruz High Class of 1954, estimated that she and another classmate, Julie Engelking, “must have driven hundreds of miles cruisin’ the drag between the Cross Roads and the 5-Spot” while in high school.
Added classmate Emma Turner, "No matter where we went for an evening or what we did in the '50s, we eventually ended up at the Cross Roads or the 5-Spot.”
"How we all remained slim despite those fourth meals of 'burgers, fries and shakes on Friday and Saturday nights after games, movies or dances is a metabolic mystery,” recalled Barbara McFadden.
"Funny, but I don't ever remember being inside the Cross Roads or the 5-Spot, but I have lots of memories of just hanging out outside, hoping to see current crushes or meet up with other friends," remembered Marlene Coury, another ‘54 grad.
Classmate Bob Branstetter said that "we would meet at the drive-ins before, during and, sometimes, after dates. We would find out what was happening and where to go. The drive-ins were bright, full of music, and active. I can't recall anyone ever getting into trouble there."
One reason there never was any trouble is that city police officers and county sheriff’s deputies took their nightly breaks at the drive-ins, where they were served free coffee, thanks to the management. (It was cheaper than hiring rent-a-cops.)
The two drive-ins did more than gratify voracious teen appetites and nourish youthful chatter. They also served as teenage showcases, according to classmate Don Samuelson: “After football or basketball or baseball games we’d meet at the Cross Roads to celebrate victory or agonize over defeat. But we also went to show off our cars.”
My late classmate Valerie Dillehay once told me that "the first date I ever had with my boyfriend, we went to the Cross Roads in his new '36 Ford." (That boyfriend became husband Ron, SCHS Class of '53.)
Classmate Charlie Fritz said boys had another reason for going to the drive-in: “We went to check out our cars all right, but we also went to check out the newest carhops.”
Sharon Bedell remembered that, "after the action would wind down at the drive-ins, our dates would persuade us to drive out on West Cliff Drive to watch the submarine races off Lighthouse Point" overlooking Monterey Bay. Pull-outs along the ocean cliffs served as our lovers’ lanes.
The Fifties marked the heyday of the drive-in era that began disappearing in the early 1960s, courtesy of fast-food joints and ever-expanding TV. One supplied cheap food, the other cheap entertainment. Most teenagers didn’t make much money then and cheap was in vogue.
The 5-Spot building was demolished years ago and in its place today stands a two-story bank building.
The Cross Roads building, which housed a liquor store for about 35 years after the demise of the drive-in business, is still standing, having survived the Christmas Flood of 1955 that wreaked havoc in much of downtown Santa Cruz and the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 that devastated most of downtown. But the City of Santa Cruz purchased the property about five years ago and plans to raze it and erect a natural history museum in its place.
More than 50 SCHS grads of the drive-in era now living throughout the U.S. wrote to Santa Cruz City Hall and/or the local newspaper asking that the Cross Roads building be preserved as the only local structure definable as uniquely 1950s’ architecture and the county’s last remaining physical memory of that bygone era. Their pleas that the building be made part of the museum complex fell on deaf ears.
My love-hate affair with the Cross Roads ended in the summer of 1955 after my first year of college. The local newspaper hired me as a sportswriter and then continued my employment on weekends and the remaining summers until I was drafted into the Army in December 1958.
I finally got my first real summer vacation in the summer of 1960 when I came home on leave from Fort Rucker, Ala. My folks didn’t put me to work at the Cross Roads while I was on that vacation. They had sold it earlier that year and it became known as Danny’s Drive-In.
©2006 by Len Klempnauer. The photos
are from the author's collection. All rights reserved. The cartoon
is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
East, San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA. This column first posted Monday,
June 19, 2006.
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