Big Boy as a Family Obsession

When I was younger, I worked with Big Boy, at the Frisch's in Louisville. Being the proud dad, always eager to show-off my contacts to my children to impress them with my importance, I set out on a family trip one day to see if I could find my old friend! There he was, right where I'd last seen him on Taylorsville Road!



So, I took Amaris there and introduced her to Big Boy.



Later, we would visit Big Boy at the Frisch's Headquarters in Lexington.
See how he's grown! Just like a real, live Boy!

I posted this on an earlier blog and thought I re-post it here:

Down Town

Grandma and Grandpop lived in Harvey, Illinois, on Morgan street, just across from the IC tracks (Illinois Central) which segregated the residents of Harvey from the industry.

The IC tracks are to the right.
Morgan is the street just to the left.

There was a cinder alley running parallel (west) to Grandma’s driveway. It drew a perpendicular to the north behind the wood-framed garage. The alley serviced the block and then turned left (west) again, emptying at the front entrance of Thornton High School.

The house is the first one up on the left with the tan roof.

The alley running between the Thornton HS Voc Ed. Building
and the House looks like it's been paved.

Grandpop had a steady job painting warships at the Port, and mom, at 9, was working as a check-out girl at Kresge’s.

In the ‘30’s, homeless, jobless men rode the IC rails. They’d get off at the switch yard in Harvey, find their way to the cinder alley and find the mark on Grandma’s fence.

And Grandma made them Hobo Stew.

Hobo Stew

2 cans of Cream of Celery soup
2 cans of Cream of Mushroom soup
2 cans of French Onion soup
2 cans of rice
2 cans of water
a couple of chickens, cut up
some paprika, salt and pepper

mix the first 5 ingredients together in a baking dish, then
add the chicken and the spices

cover with tin foil and bake at 375 for about an hour

serve on tin plates or old pie pans

listen to Woodie Guthrie songs and think of better Times

Save your tin foil for the war effort.

For your reference, the Hobo Signs:


c/o

1978- Nixon's First Public Speech in Hyden, Ky.

Copy, Time mag, Monday, Jul. 17, 1978

Photos, jk

We'll survive. Despite all the polls and all the rest, I think there's still a hell of a lot of people out there—and you know, they want to believe...

—Nixon to Haldeman, April 25, 1973

It was not a re-emergence to compare with Napoleon's journey out of Elban exile to try to regain France. Nor was it precisely the great soap opera of redemption that occurred in the mid-'50s when the American people decided that Ingrid Bergman, disgraced adulteress, might be restored to favor. But somewhere in the historic procession from the majestic to the trivial, one might plausibly place Richard Nixon's trip to Hyden, Ky., over the Fourth of July weekend.

For the first time since he said goodbye to the White House staff four years ago and flew away to his self-imposed house arrest in San Clemente, Nixon came to speak at a fully public occasion. He had rejected 100,000 invitations. He chose Hyden carefully: a remote eastern Kentucky coal-mining town of 500, Republican since the Civil War, where the virtue of loyalty has been toughened into a kind of clannish defiance. Nixon rightly sensed that there he would find, unregenerate, some of the believers he described to H.R. Haldeman in the spring of 1973, when his Administration was in the first stages of its slow-motion collapse. "All Nixon did was stand by his friends," said the local motel owner in Hyden. "And that is one of the traits of us mountain people."

Hyden and the rest of Leslie County had reason to think well of Richard Nixon. His revenue-sharing program had, among other things, helped to build a new $2.5 million recreation center (gymnasium, swimming pool, community center and tennis courts). Gerald Ford was invited to dedicate the center, but his schedule was full. To Hyden's surprise, Nixon accepted. Flying into a tiny nearby airport in an executive jet, Nixon may have imagined himself in a time warp, transported back ten years to an old campaign. He found a crowd of 1,000; some of them had waited for three hours in 90° heat.

They wore Nixon campaign buttons; some lugged his 1,120-page memoirs, the size of a small steamer trunk, hoping to get an autograph from the last President they truly and fully liked. "He should get around the country more and speak out," a local Republican committeewoman said with wistful truculence. "Other Presidents have done as bad as he ever did." But a friend of hers was not so sure. "He wouldn't ever want to run for public office again," she said. "He should just lead a quiet life from now on."

Five satin-shirted high school musicians played Hail to the Chief. Nixon plunged into the crowd, pressing flesh, absorbing adulation like a man breaking a long fast.