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N0KFQ > TODAY 14.11.11 21:39l 59 Lines 2755 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Nov 14
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Sent: 111114/2026Z 14011@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Nov 14, 2006:
Last day for Texas' celebrated drive-in Pig Stands
On November 14, 2006, state officials close the last two of
Texas' famed Pig Stand restaurants, the only remaining pieces of
the nation's first drive-in restaurant empire. The restaurants'
owners were bankrupt, and they owed the Texas comptroller more
than $200,000 in unpaid sales taxes.
A Dallas entrepreneur named Jessie G. Kirby built the first Pig
Stand along the Dallas-Fort Worth Highway in October 1921. It was
a roadside barbecue restaurant unlike any other: Its patrons
could drive up, eat and leave, all without budging from their
automobiles. ("People with cars are so lazy," Kirby explained,
"they don't want to get out of them.") Kirby lured these
car-attached customers with great fanfare and spectacle. When a
customer pulled into the Pig Stand parking lot, teenaged boys in
white shirts and black bow ties jogged over to his car, hopped up
onto the running board_sometimes before the driver had even
pulled into a parking space_and took his order. (This daredevilry
won the servers a nickname: carhops.) Soon, the Pig Stand
drive-ins replaced the carhops with attractive young girls on
roller skates, but the basic formula was the same: good-looking
young people, tasty food, speedy service and auto-based
convenience.
That first Pig Stand was a hit with hungry drivers, and soon it
became a chain. (The slogan: "America's Motor Lunch.") Kirby and
his partners made one of the first franchising arrangements in
restaurant history, and Pig Stands began cropping up everywhere.
By 1934, there were more than 130 Pig Stands in nine states.
(Most were in California and Florida.) Meanwhile, the chain kept
innovating. Many people say that California's Pig Stand No. 21
became the first drive through restaurant in the world in 1931,
and food historians believe that Pig Stand cooks invented
deep-fried onion rings, chicken-fried steak sandwiches and a
regional specialty known as Texas Toast.
But wartime gasoline and food rationing hit the Pig Stands hard,
and after the war they struggled to compete with newer, flashier
drive-ins. By the end of the 1950s, all of the franchises outside
of Texas had closed. By 2005, even the Texas Pig Stands were
struggling to survive_only six remained in the whole state_and by
the next year they had all disappeared.
In 2007, state bankruptcy trustees found a way for one Pig Stand,
in San Antonio, to reopen. Though it will probably never be as
popular as it once was, and customers now have to get out of
their cars and go inside to eat, the restaurant remains a
sentimental favorite of many Texans.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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