It's amazing, what can get started over a cup of coffee, especially if the coffee is a free refill....
It's 1975, and a friend and I had just been up to the football game at George Daniel. We had a ways to walk yet, so we decided to stop at Burger Chef-they were re-modeling, and the coffee was a dime, with free refills.
We went in, there were a couple other people we know already there, so we snag a booth. A bit later, here comes some more of our crowd, then a few more; that's how it started.
For ten years, we hung out there almost every night, for at least an hour or so, sometimes more. There we were, a mixed bag of late teen-early 20's slackers, usually stoned to one degree or other, riffing off each other and the people around us.
To be sure, we weren't popular-the management felt we took up space and made the other patrons nervous (no doubt we did), and we really didn't care. It was our version of That 70's Show, actually taking place in the 70's....
Hangin' out
Down the street
Same ol' thing
We did last week....
And we were laboring under those two potent delusions of the Ever-Popular Rock-And-Roll Lifestyle:
We were free
AND
We weren't hurting anybody.
Stupid, wasteful, and quasi-criminal as it was, we had fun.
I got thrown out in '85 by the cops for cussing out the manager....I don't recall what started it.
Others hung on, or left, to persue other interests.
From what I hear, the chain is gone now. The one we hung out in became a Hardees....according to Google, it's still there....can't vouch for the coffee, though.
The Hardees is long gone. After being closed up for quite some time, the building looked as though someone bought it a year or two ago and was going to open up a Mom-and-Pop type place (they put up a sign). But it never seemed to materialize.
ReplyDeleteIf you're talking about the place on 28th Street, it is now some kind of mom & pop soul food joint. I think it's the same folks who used to be out on 254 across from Marc's a year or so ago.
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