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Completely Sauced

The Source

My most poignant and sticky memory was of the Thousand Island dressing running through my fingers. I’m sure that my college days held recollections that should have been more important, but when I think of college I tend to forget the diplomas, classes, and tests, and instead latch onto the atmosphere of Tops Big Boy restaurant. On summer evenings when the wind’s in the right direction, I swear I can still smell the exhaust from the fryer wafting out the north end of the building. The suspendered and checkered-pantsed icon held sway on Morton Avenue for many years. The famous chain of high cholesterol cuisine was created when a California fellow sold his Desoto Roadster in 1936 and open up a restaurant named Bob’s Pantry. One year after he opened, a customer asked for two patties and the first double-decker was born. One chubby six-year-old in overalls would often sweep out the place for a free hamburger and the name Big Boy was born. Wiser heads than mine probably know when Big Boy came to Jacksonville, but I know that it was a favorite hangout of the college crowd, and for just over five bucks you’d get fries, slaw, a drink, and that monstrous burger that arrived so sauce-soaked that you had about thirty seconds to consume the behemoth before you had to ask for an extra straw to slurp your burger. For the life of me, I can’t remember a single healthy thing on the menu. This was back in the pre-salad-bar days, and if anything in the restaurant stopped moving, Big Boy would fry it. It seems as if the place was open unusually late at night so it also became the repository of the local late-night souses. Word has it that the grease and salt level in a BB breakfast could also cure any hangover. I checked out the current Big Boy menu on line and found scandalous items such as “Granola Parfait and Fresh Fruit” listed right next to “Cinnamon Apple Fruit-Topped Oatmeal.” You’d never find such pansy offerings on the old Jacksonville menu. Okay, my memory is fuzzy, but I think the choices included something like, “Half a Cow slathered in Three Pounds of Cheese on an Entire Loaf of Bread with a Pot Full of Sauce.” There was no need to super-size anything at Big Boy. The food was just born big. And then of course there was the drive-in behind the dining room with living, breathing waitresses who got the orders right just often enough to keep you coming back. An hour spent in your car behind Big Boy and you could tell who was in town as they circled the parked cars and the sparrows dined lustily on the dropped fries. Of course there was no way in heck you could neatly consume a Big Boy sandwich at a table, much less in the back seat of your friend’s GTO, so most teen cars in town carried with them a permanent aroma of petrified fries and ketchup. If you were going to prom that night, the trick was to wear an orange cummerbund that might at least mask some of the stains from the Thousand Island sauce. Either Big Boy hired very tiny waitresses or the restaurant used terribly large plates, because when Mrs. Noble would come at you with a stack of meals for four, her head would be completely obliterated in a cloud of French fries. I never could recognize the Big Boy waitresses on the street. I thought they all looked like fries and milk shakes. My most vivid memory of the restaurant’s interior was of a row of planters suspended about 12 feet in the air over the counter. (Yes, a real live lunch counter.) If you sat in the circular corner booth and bit one end off your soda straw’s wrapper you had a perfect shot at the fake ferns growing on Big Boy’s wall. When the State Police would choose to take their supper break at the counter you had to be especially careful with your aim. I hated eating out with my theatre friends. They could miss their shot, plop their wrapper into a State Trooper’s lemon pie, then pretend it was me who’d attacked the cop with my straw. If you must eat dinner with an actor, make sure he’s not very talented. Jacksonville is blessed with fine places to eat, and as long as a restaurant serves food I feel it’s completed its mission in life, but oh, how I’d love to visit a Big Boy again. The nearest one I’ve seen is in Danville and that’s a long way to drive for a sauced-up burger. Besides, my friends wouldn’t be there and if they were they’d now be ordering off the “Lite” or “Heart Healthy” menu. And with my luck the State Cop would have no sense of humor.