Since Sanders was a Corporal

In the 1990s, every fourth grade student in the Commonwealth of Kentucky was expected to write and assemble a collection of essays about the history and culture of Kentucky into what my fourth grade teacher, and likely also the Kentucky Department of Education called a “Kentucky Scrapbook.” The essays could be about anything, assuming they were Kentucky-related. I remember writing about the official state flower (goldenrod), the two official state trees (the tulip poplar and Kentucky coffee tree), and the state critter (the gray squirrel). Were I assembling a Kentucky scrapbook as an adult, I’d probably write an essay or two about Kentucky’s contributions to the fast food industry including the lesser known origins of Long John Silver’s and Fazoli’s, and of course the eponymous fried chicken that was Harland “The Colonel” Sanders’ gift to the world. 

Anyone with a casual interest in fast food history is aware of the humble origins of KFC and how at the age of 65, Harland Sanders, motivated by the planned bypass of his business by what would become Interstate 75, set out to create a franchising empire based on the fried chicken recipe he served at his humble restaurant/gas station/motel in Corbin, Kentucky. Sanders, incidentally served in the First World War, but never attained a military rank higher than corporal. He called himself "Colonel" because like many semi-prominent Kentuckians, he had been given the honorary title of Kentucky Colonel. Pete Harman, owner of the Harman Cafe in South Salt Lake City, Utah would become Sanders’ first franchisee. His restaurant would add Sanders’ chicken to its existing menu, and would become the first location to use the Kentucky Fried Chicken name. KFC wouldn't become a standalone restaurant concept in its own right until the brand changed ownership over a decade later, but at the time it wasn’t terribly unusual for a company to market a franchised menu and name to existing restaurants. That’s more or less how Big Boy briefly became a nationwide chain of loosely affiliated regional chains, and how brands like Broaster Foods continue to operate today. Indeed, Harland Sanders' business model was nothing new when Utahns got their first taste of Kentucky Fried Chicken. At the time, independently owned restaurants and bars had been selling Chicken in the Rough since the Colonel was a corporal. 

Chicken in the Rough  is one of the earliest franchised restaurant brands in the US, dating back to 1936 by Oklahoma restaurateurs Beverly and Rubye Osborne, whose relationship and respective gender identities are unclear from their given names, and based on my limited research, have been lost to time. (Beverly has historically been used as both a masculine and feminine name, and I learned in fourth grade that Kentucky once had a male governor named Ruby Laffoon, whose name is second in hilarity only to fellow Kentucky governor Flem Sampson.) The exact origins of the Chicken in the Rough name are similarly unclear, originating either from an unintentional omission of utensils from a chicken dinner or an unfortunate picnic basket spill during an ill-fated Steinbeckian exodus from Dust Bowl-era Oklahoma. What we do know is that Chicken in the Rough was once served at close to 300 franchised locations, most of which were existing restaurants who paid to use the Chicken in the Rough brand and recipe. Despite being first to market and having a similar origin story, Chicken in the Rough floundered while KFC became a worldwide sensation. The Colonel’s chicken was cooked quickly in a special pressure fryer that lent itself well to standalone fast food locations at a time when fast food customers were beginning to crave more than just the burgers that launched the industry, while Chicken in the Rough was cooked in an unpressurized deep fryer that kept it tied to full service restaurants during the fast food chicken boom of the 1960s. 

Port Huron's home of Chicken in the Rough

Today, Chicken in the Rough is sold at only three locations, Beverly’s Pancake House in Oklahoma City, which seems to have some connection to Beverly and Rubye Osborne, and two bars that are separated by less than 3 miles that are situated on opposite sides of an international border. The Palms Krystal Bar and Grill in Port Huron Michigan and McCarthy Grill across the St. Clair river in Sarnia, Ontario are the other two holdout Chicken in the Rough franchisees. 

Sadly, I learned of the existence of Beverly’s Pancake House after my first and only visit to Oklahoma to eat at the last Ku-Ku, and with nonessential travel over the Canadian border restricted at the time, The Palms Krystal was the easiest place for me to experience Chicken in the Rough. It was a relatively quick two hour drive to Port Huron from my adopted home in the Detroit suburbs, and I was greeted by a vintage neon sign of the Chicken in the Rough logo, a rooster reminiscent of Roger Miller’s character in the Disney Robin Hood movie clad in cartoonish golf attire with one (large) talon improbably wrapped around a golf club whose shaft has presumably just broken attempting to hit a nearby golf ball out of some tall grass, or “the rough” in golf parlance. Whoever designed the character the better part of a century ago made the choice to depict him smoking what I assume was meant to be a hand rolled cigarette, but to modern eyes appears to be a joint. The same character appeared on a hand painted A-frame sign on the sidewalk in front of the building’s entrance, and again on a rug near the bar. Many broken chains are short on branding, but that does not appear to be the case with Chicken in the Rough. 

I strongly suspect chicken is tomorrow's special too. 

I was seated at a booth near the back of the barroom, and ordered from an attentive server what I knew to be Chicken in the Rough’s signature dish, half a fried chicken on a bed of shoestring fries with a biscuit and honey. I was informed by my server that the chicken was cooked to order and would take 20 minutes or so to prepare, and my response conveyed that I was okay with that. I’d gladly wait that long and longer for freshly cooked fried chicken. I took my 20 minute wait as an opportunity to appreciate my surroundings. The Palms Krystal Bar looks like it hasn’t had a remodel since around the time Pete Harman started selling Kentucky Fried Chicken in Utah. Every fixture and molding had the aesthetic of the late 1940s or early 1950s, but appeared pristine. Adding to the immersiveness of the experience was a paper Chicken in the Rough placemat on my table, featuring not only the aforementioned stoned golfing rooster but also his “caddie,” a tiny yellow chick carrying a similarly diminutive bag of golf clubs whilst morbidly proclaiming, “I’d gladly be fried for Chicken in the Rough!” and in turn, triggering in me the vague sense of guilt that all meat eaters feel to some extent or another in modern times. Were it not for the wall of flatscreen TVs above the bar, the retro decor and charmingly dated marketing materials might make one briefly wonder if they had traveled back in time 70 years or so. 

A pleasantly anachronistic dining area and bar

True to my server’s word, my meal arrived almost exactly 20 minutes after I had ordered. It was situated in a plastic basket atop a branded paper liner. Four pieces of chicken were nestled among freshly cooked shoestring fries. The whole exquisite heap was topped by two nonstandard items, a cup of coleslaw, and not a biscuit but a mass produced bread roll. I was unsurprised by the roll. Decent biscuits are tough enough to find in the upper south, let alone across the river from the Great White North. The coleslaw, similarly unsurprisingly, had a tzatziki-like flavor, likely a product of Southeast Michigan’s Greek-American culinary traditions. I can’t imagine there were many Okies from Muskogee by way of Alexandroupolis who might have contributed a coleslaw recipe to Beverly and their relative, Rubye in 1930s Oklahoma. 

"The Chicken"

And The Chicken's Caddie (sic)

The chicken, fresh out of the fryer, was too hot to eat, so I took the opportunity to try the fries that had begun to cool thanks to a lower thermal mass. In my previous post, I complained about the fresh cut shoestring fries recently removed from the menu at the Columbus Ritzy’s, but the fresh cut shoestrings from Chicken in the Rough were pleasantly crispy unlike their discontinued counterparts from one state south. They had clearly been fried twice, once to cultivate a crust and again to cook through. This is the key to a good freedom fry. Pre-frozen fries are usually par-fried before being frozen, so when they’re fried again just before being served they develop a pleasantly crispy exterior. It’s why freshly cooked from frozen McDonald’s fries are objectively better than the mushy mass of greasy potato girders at the bottom of your Five Guys bag, despite the fact that Five Guys slices their own spuds. I suspect it’s also why the Columbus Ritzy’s switched to frozen fries to match its counterparts in Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia. Give me a twice-fried frozen fry over a once-fried fresh cut any day. My point being that if you’re going to serve fresh cut fries, cook them right, or don’t bother, and to my delight, Chicken in the Rough Fries were both fresh cut and cooked right. 

A basket of chicken and fries with nonstandard bread and coleslaw

Before I filled up on fries, I began a few cursory nibbles on the chicken, starting with the smallest and quickest to cool wing before working my way up to the leg, thigh, and breast, giggling with adolescent delight about how I would later write the suggestive-sounding sentence you’re reading right now. Aside from being fresh, the chicken was unremarkable. Unlike the old man in the white suit, Beverly and Rubye seemed to specify only salt and pepper in their seasoning blend, but the fact that the chicken was fresh from the fryer made it much more pleasant to eat than the overbreaded lukewarm chicken I received on my most recent trip to the KFC drive thru. Chicken in the Rough didn’t need 11, or for that matter, 21 herbs and spices to be tasty. It simply had to be cooked to order. 

Drumstick detail 

I finished by topping a few remaining chicken scraps and my roll with honey from the plastic squeeze bottle on the table. It was another local contribution, purporting to be from nearby Harsens Island, and I wondered how many depression-era Chicken in the Rough patrons did the same to maximize their caloric intake as a survival strategy. My meal at Chicken in the Rough was the only thing of substance I ate that day, and I wasn’t especially hungry until late in the lunching hour the next day, which in my mind made its roots in tough times evident. 

It was approaching midday on a Sunday when I concluded my meal, and found the dining room  much more full and lively than when I had entered less than an hour before. Upon exiting the building, I found a chicken takeout window out back that appeared to predate the recent takeout boom necessitated by our era’s tough times. It was perhaps there to compete with the more common fast food fried chicken places. I suspect most customers call in their orders given the prep time involved, but Chicken in the Rough would be a welcome alternative to takeout from KFC or Popeye’s if I lived in or around Port Huron. 

Imagine an alternate timeline in which fast food never became popular. Many franchised restaurants experiences in this reality would likely look a lot like Chicken in the Rough at the Palms Krystal, a beloved neighborhood establishment serving up a few franchised and branded recipes, embracing a business model blending the concepts of independent and chain restaurants under a single roof. It’s something not seen often in our reality encompassing a more homogeneous restaurant industry less dependent on dine-in customers than ever, but it’s a charmingly antiquated spectacle worth experiencing if you find yourself below the sign of a pot smoking rooster holding a broken golf club. 

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store

Fit to Rejoin Society?

Ernest T. Bass isn't the timeliest reference, I'll admit. For those not in the know, he's a tertiary character from the Andy Griffith Show.  

Over the past 14 months or so, I’ve tried to keep the pandemic talk, or rather bemoaning the realities of living through a pandemic to a minimum. With my travel and restaurant-based writing prompts suddenly limited, I figured my role in the ongoing crisis was to provide a distraction from the world with what little motivation to write that I had. The last thing my loyal readers needed was a year’s worth of “Woe is me!” blog posts from an objectively privileged perspective, so I hunkered down and tried to write and post something silly once a month or so to give anyone reading a brief moment of diversion, if not happiness. 

I’ve been called a loner, hermit, and recluse more times than I care to admit, but I prefer to think of myself as an “Extreme introvert.” As such, I was well-suited for the lifestyle we all suddenly had to adopt late last winter. The only person I saw regularly was my partner, Esmeralda Fitzmonster. I was able to do my day job 95% from home. All my shopping was done online, and necessities were delivered to my door or loaded in the back of my car by the essential workers who were doing well more than their fair share of work to keep society functioning. The only pieces of my old life I really missed were road trips and restaurants, two pastimes that had given me quite a bit of joy since long before I started my ridiculous blog about endangered chain restaurants. 

March 10, 2020 was the last time I ate in a restaurant that I can recall. I gave up shopping for groceries in stores sometime last summer. My distaste for small talk led me to begin cutting my own hair long before DIY grooming became a pandemic-driven necessity, and not having to work daily in an office environment meant I could grow a majestic mullet and beard. (I stopped shaving around the same time I stopped going into grocery stores.) In short, I had gone full Howard Hughes, and my newfound levels of reclusiveness might have spiraled into a Grey Gardens scenario had Esmeralda not been around to remind me to bathe and help her clean up around the house occasionally. I share these details, not because I think I’m unique in these experiences. We’ve all had a long year of uncertainty, sweat pants, and sourdough. Instead, I’m discussing the weirdest year of my life because I now find myself in a time of transition that countless others are also in or will soon be, and my dumb blog feels like as good a place as any to process my feelings. 

As of this week, I am considered fully vaccinated per the CDC’s guidelines, and I find myself consulting the imaginary parole board that lives in my brain to determine if I’m fit to rejoin society. In the time in between my first and second shots, questions of what I could and couldn’t do safely in a few weeks time monopolized my thoughts during my free moments, and I had serious concerns about my ability to conduct myself appropriately in civilized society. I wasn’t sure I still possessed the ability to interact with people out in the world. I was more than a little concerned I’d run around throwing rocks at windows and laughing giddily like Ernest T. Bass the second I tried to venture back out into the world. 

After a great deal of consideration, I concluded that it would be safe, ethical, and honorable for me to start doing my own grocery shopping in-store, eating in restaurants, and traveling domestically again once I had obtained the prerequisite antibodies. My thought process was that as essential workers, anyone I encountered working in a restaurant, hotel, or retail store has very likely at least had the opportunity to be vaccinated, and any other customers I encountered were there by choice whether they were vaccinated or not. Coupled with my strict adherence to masking up to protect those around me and the preliminary indications that it is more difficult for vaccinated people to be carriers, I concluded that I could resume something resembling my old pre-pandemic hobby of seeking out and visiting the surviving locations of broken chains. My body was ready, but was my brain?

I decided to start out slowly only yesterday, with a trip to my favorite local big box store for my first in-store grocery run in nearly a year. I’ll spare you the mundane details of exactly what went down, but the shopping trip didn’t go as well as I had hoped, and I was probably at least 51% to blame. Thankfully, no rocks were thrown by me or anyone else, and I made a promise to myself that I’d get right back on the proverbial horse and ride it to a restaurant with the intention of dining in. 

Carving beef since 1957

Today, I made good on that promise and had a late lunch/early dinner in Royal Oak, Michigan at the last operating Sign of the Beefcarver, the sole remaining holdout of a chain of roast beef-focused cafeterias that once had around 20 locations in and around Detroit and Chicago. Thorough Broken Chains readers will recall I visited and wrote about them in the early days of this blog. Given their broken chain status, Sign of the Beefcarver seemed a fitting place to dip my toe back into the figurative au jus of being a fully-functional member of society, but I felt no small amount of trepidation about dining in for the first time in over a year. Would I say or do something rude, offensive, or illegal like literally dipping my literal toe in the literal au jus? Would eating somewhere other than my house or car feel completely foreign to me? Would I be able to remove my mask long enough to shovel food into my face without worrying about endangering anyone else in the building? These were the thoughts that haunted my drive to Royal Oak this afternoon.

I was relieved to learn my concerns were mostly unfounded. I feel I was able to conduct myself reasonably well; I was at least able to keep my toes and various other appendages out of the serving trays. My largest faux pas was when the employee tasked with carrying my heavy cafeteria tray to my table asked me to step to the left so he could pick up said tray, I stepped to the right and had to be reminded to step to the other left. There were a couple of instances where I was eating while maskless that members of the very attentive staff approached my table, masked, to make sure my food tasted alright and my glass of Diet Pepsi was sufficiently full, and I wasn’t able to react quickly enough to put my own mask on. I felt weird about possibly endangering them, but I took a moment to remind myself that they were probably vaccinated, or at least, unvaccinated by choice. 

This meal made me feel things. 

It was still the same old Beefcarver with only minimal nods to present circumstances, such as clear plastic dividers along the serving line separating employees from the public and chairs removed from half the tables to limit capacity. There were no other diners in my immediate vicinity, and it felt reasonable and safe, at least from my antibody-rich perspective. My only real disappointment was when I noticed the self-serve pickle and beet station was bare, but an employee noticed me noticing and was quick to offer to bring pre-packaged pickles and beets from a nearby mini fridge to my table, along with the horseradish I requested. I even ordered exactly the same thing I had ordered when I wrote the initial Sign of the Beefcarver Broken Chains post, mostly by accident. It was all a welcome taste of normalcy, and I found myself feeling uncharacteristically emotional halfway through the meal. I was suddenly past what seemed to be the nadir of pandemic-related weirdness, and the catharsis was hitting me before I had even tasted my blueberry pie. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice I was going through something, and the meal was largely uneventful. 

Pickles and beets, pickles and beets! I gotta get me some pickles and beets!

I apologize for not taking more pictures, but I had covered Sign of the Beefcarver before, and I am not yet confident in my ability to photograph restaurant interiors covertly after a year of letting my sneaky camera skills atrophy. It’s something I’ll work on in the near future, as I’ve tentatively planned several trips to some broken chains I’ve not yet explored as well as an old favorite or two. Stay tuned, and check back often. The reopening of Broken Chains is upon us. Please wish me luck, and feel free to point out any flaws in my logic regarding the ethics of travelling and eating in restaurants. The last thing I want is for my frivolity to endanger the health of any non-consenting parties. 

On that high note, I’ll conclude. Thank you for your continued readership and for tolerating the sparse, increasingly silly posts. Stay safe, mask up, and get vaccinated!

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store

Enjoy Every Sandwich

You didn't think I'd forget Big Boy Month, did you?

A few weeks back I was inundated with messages and comments from readers, friends, acquaintances, frenemies, and enemies about a video the noted YouTuber, author, and Vlog Brother Hank Green had uploaded to the YouTube channel he shares with his brother, John. He discussed at length their childhood meals at the local Rax restaurant and segued those memories into a discussion of an ad campaign for the fast food chain that was launched shortly before their 1992 bankruptcy. I had long been aware of Uncle Alligator, the Rax mascot geared toward the youngest Rax customers, but I had never heard of Mr. Delicious, the plaid suit wearing middle-aged character associated with the chain’s final pre-bankruptcy ad campaign. Mr. Delicious was the antithesis of the avuncular cartoon gator that adorned Rax kids meal bags and molded plastic drink bottles. Mr. Delicious was instead meant to appeal to adults looking for a grown up, dare I say, stylish fast food experience. Amid the Rax bankruptcy, Mr. Delicious faded into obscurity as quickly as he appeared, and he likely would have been largely forgotten were it not Hank Green’s video.

Mr. Delicious, Rax pitchman and Steve Higgins lookalike. 

Mr. Delicious, and obscure restaurant mascots in general were on my mind as I was brainstorming how I could best observe Big Boy Month in a time when travelling long distances and eating in restaurants are both inadvisable, if not impossible. Earlier this year, seemingly in response to the chicken sandwich craze that Popeye’s sparked, the Michigan shard of the shattered Big Boy empire revived one of the Big Boy brand’s own obscure mascots to be the face of their entrant into the suddenly crowded premium chicken sandwich market. Dolly, the namesake of the new sandwich, was once a character who appeared with Big Boy in the eponymous Big Boy comic books that were once handed out to the youngest Big Boy patrons. I don’t recall ever seeing a Big Boy comic book anywhere but the odd antique shop or vintage comic book store in my three odd decades as a human being and occasional Big Boy customer, but Dolly was ripe for rebirth nonetheless, likely because she could be resurrected cheaply without having to pay any artists or lawyers to create or license a new character. 

Dolly, holding her namesake sandwich in the traditional Big Boy pose.

I have somehow managed to avoid eating a Popeye’s chicken sandwich as well as its many analogs save for an occasional Chick-fil-A in my weakest moments when my desire for greasy poultry and pickle slices on a bun outweighs my distaste for the bigotry of the brand’s owners. As for Popeye’s, It’s not politics, but poor service that has kept me away. I’ve visited Popeye’s locations all over the country, but I’ve never been to one I would describe as “Clean” or “Well-run.” Add a drive-thru line that stretches out of the parking lot and down the block, and it’s been more than enough to make it easy for me to resist the allure of a Popeye’s sandwich. 

My complex feelings about premium chicken sandwiches had been the back of my mind for weeks when I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and happened upon a post by Tuckey’s Big Boy in Tecumseh, Michigan, where I had a very pleasant meal last fall, announcing that they had both online ordering and curbside order pickup. I immediately saw this as an opportunity to give the Dolly chicken sandwich a try and to get out of the house for the couple of hours it would take me to drive to Tecumseh and back, so as soon as I had the time, I got out my phone, navigated to the only slightly glitchy online ordering platform and put in a late lunch order. I’ve lately passed my free time exploring the back roads of Southeast Michigan, and I plotted a semi-circuitous route of my favorite semi-scenic, semi-paved thoroughfares to take me to Tecumseh. 

I pulled into the empty Big Boy parking lot at 1 PM on a Friday, two days into a three-week ban on inside dining issued by the governor. The governor’s order had little effect on me. I haven’t eaten in a restaurant since March, opting instead for takeout and DoorDash orders, but the sudden decline in business resulted in Tuckey’s Big Boy cutting back their hours to offer only dinner four days per week. On the days they were open for lunch, there didn’t appear to be much of a rush of takeout customers, at least there wasn’t a rush when I was there. I pulled into one of the four empty parking spots marked for curbside pickup, and called the restaurant. I informed them I had placed an online order, and the voice coming through my phone informed me that it would be right out, an assurance offered without asking for my name or order number, implying that mine was the only pending online order. A masked Big Boy employee emerged from the restaurant’s front door a minute or two later with my bag of food, which I promptly took before driving around to the back of the restaurant to eat in my car. 

My exact words upon receiving this bag were, "Ohhh Boy! Big Boy®"

I like my slaw cole, my TV loud, and my transmissions manual. 

Eating this sandwich in my car is in my top 5 best experiences of 2020. 

In addition to the Dolly sandwich I ordered, I also requested coleslaw, coconut cream pie, and mandatory fries came with my sandwich as is customary at Michigan Big Boys. I’m happy to report that the various sides and desserts were far from the worst I’ve experienced at a Michigan Big Boy, but the sandwich was the main event. Just like Popeye’s chicken sandwich, the Dolly is offered in mild and spicy variations. I opted for the mild version, not out of an aversion to spicy food, but due to the novel fact that the mild Dolly is topped with tartar sauce, perhaps inspired by Frisch’s, the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky contingent of the remnants of the Big Boy chain that tends to put tartar sauce on everything. The first bite of the Dolly made it abundantly apparent what all the chicken sandwich-related hoopla has been about. It’s not an exaggeration for me to say it was the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever eaten, thanks to the presence of a thick and juicy fried chicken breast, and the perfect amount of tartar sauce and pickles that have a subtle spicy, tangy flavor that remind me of some flavor I experienced in better times, perhaps decades ago, but can’t quite place. The brioche bun, while trendy, was also the perfect delivery device. Its dense crumb held up well to the briny pickle chips and tartar sauce that had lost its viscosity once it came into contact with hot chicken. Best of all, the Dolly is a sandwich that can be experienced without strings attached. As far as I know, the Big Boy brand carries no political baggage comparable to that of Chick-fil-A, and the worst service I've experienced at a Big Boy is better than the best I've had at a Popeye’s. The Dolly stands as a great chicken sandwich, uncomplicated by the unpleasantness of the world around it.  

Standard issue Michigan Big Boy fries...

...and coconut cream pie

An individual more talented than myself once offered the advice to enjoy every sandwich, and that chunk of wisdom is on my mind as I recall eating that Dolly chicken sandwich in my car while parked behind the Tecumseh, Michigan Big Boy. In a time with relatively few bright spots, something as simple as eating a really good sandwich stands out more than it usually would, and serves as a reminder that every sandwich, every small, simple pleasure is worth savoring and enjoying, especially when pleasant, normal, experiences are in short supply. But it was the ritual surrounding the sandwich, the drive to an obscure corner of the map, snapping the surreptitious photos, and indeed, writing this very blog post that have the fleeting, subtly spicy tang of the semi-recent past, and hopefully also the not too distant future when I can again travel wide and far to experience the surviving locations of the broken chains. 

With the conclusion of Big Boy Month comes Raxgiving, a day set aside to support the broken chains. I won’t make it to a Rax this year, but I plan on supporting a broken chain restaurant or two that are closer to my home. I encourage anyone reading this to support their local restaurants as well, whether or not they be associated with a broken chain, provided that you can do so safely.  

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store

There Once Was a Fast Food Chain From Holt

My friends and my family can't quell me,

From this rhyming habit, unhealthy,

This limerick shtick, 

Is a moldy old trick,

That I stole from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.

There once was a fast food chain from Holt,
That sprang up quick, like old Usain Bolt.
Hot 'n Now was their name,
And from Michigan they came.
But they went down in a fast food revolt. 

They didn't have tables or servers, 

And sold drive-thru olive-topped burgers.
Most closed up in the nineties,
Leaving buildings behind, these,
The result of too many bad mergers. 

This one sits abandoned in Grand Rapids.
No new tenant moved in, so it happens.
Unkempt and alone,
Yet next to Auto Zone
One can hope that it's not dead, just nappin'. 

Across town, another is empty.
Devoid of a new occupant's symp'thy.
A later building design,
This Hot 'n Now could be mine.
If a real estate agent could tempt me. 

Not every Hot 'n Now is deserted.
This one, by renovation perverted.
But there's no need to sigh,
Because they serve up pad Thai.
With the building's old branding subverted.  

This one in Saginaw is a vape shop.
For nicotine addicts, a great stop.
Their usual crowd's,
Always ripping fat clouds,
Smelling like Froot Loops, gummies, or grape pop. 

This old Hot 'n Now just sells java,
Presumably served cold or like lava.
Another business in town,
Also makes money off brown.
'Cause that septic truck's not full of guava. 

It's been a while since this one saw action,
Serving ice cream like Robbins and Baskin
Its roof once was red,
But now, it's yellow instead.
And it's named for a film with Bill Paxton.

This Hot 'n Now, of the newer variety,
Gives preservationists little anxiety.
They didn't change much,
Just new signs and such.
So the building maintains notoriety. 

This one in Toledo grew awnings.
At its name, "Netty's," I'm not fawning.
Not Lucy's, nor Linuses,
It will clear out your sinuses.
And the monochrome orange leaves me yawning. 

This old Hot 'n Now wears a costume.
With a custom facade, it is entombed.
Sir, this is now an Arby's,
Where you stay in your car, please.
There's no dining room just a drive-thru.

That Arby's is my cue for conclusions.
And some vague current event allusions.

This post was brought to you

By Google Street View

Because I'm still stuck in seclusion. 

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store

Rax/Rix/Jax Pics

Things haven gotten weird, and I haven’t posted for a while.

I am stuck at home, and I can't travel. 

So I thought I’d write about fast food with style

In hopes that my sanity doesn’t completely unravel. 

Rax Roast Beef is a chain that’s been on my mind,

For the past couple years, since my Rax meat-cute. 

Their decline left hundreds of buildings behind, 

I thought I’d show you some from Google Street View. 

But before I do, I should probably produce, 

From my vast, fast food photo archives, 

Some pictures of Rax locations that are still in use, 

That lurk in dark corners of my hard drive. 

Harlan, Kentucky, birthplace of Raxgiving
Has a classic Rax with slot windows and a solarium.
As the last Rax in the state, it's quite good at outliving,
And functions like a 1980s vivarium.

Joliet, Illinois has the world's oldest Rax.
Despite the roof, it never sold pizza nor breadsticks.
This architecture was typical of Jax,
Jax changed to Rax after it was Rix 

Of these building types there is quite a glut.

If you keep an eye out for their features,
You'll see more Rax buildings than Seymour saw butts, 

When he hid out under the bleachers. 

This Rax in Anderson was the last in Indiana,
But it closed in 2011
It now does Hibachi just like, Benny and Hannah
Hey, at least it's not a Bob Evans. 

This National Coney is an old Rax, you can tell,
On the east side of Metro Detroit.
All things considered, I'd say its aged pretty well,
Which is more than I'd say for Jon Voight. 

Uncle Alligator left this empty Rax long ago,
Back when people still carried a beeper.
How much longer it will stand, nobody knows.
(Please ignore my old Ford Festiver.)

Grand Rapids, Michigan has its own Jax/Rix era relic,
Though it served its last BBC in antiquity.
It's roof resembles the mustache of Tom Selleck,
Now on with the next part of the soliloquy.

Taco Johns removed the solarium here,
At this old Rax in Billings, Montana.
But the slotted windows make its first occupant clear,
Despite the big yellow veranda. 

Frisch's Big Boy took over the Perrysburg Rax,
That's just down the street from Ground Round.
They still serve a buffet and salad bar snacks,
Like they did when Rax was in town. 

Skyline annexed this Rax in Columbus,
To serve a taste of old Cincinnati.
The new color scheme probably caused quite a ruckus.
Blue like Gonzo, yellow like Selma and Patty. 

Canadians brought about this Rax's defeat,
But their victory showed little promise...

...when a new Rax opened right down the street,
In a structure built by Dave Thomas.

So keep your eyes open when you can go out safely, 

There might be an old Rax 'round the corner. 

But for now, please stay inside, even if you're not gravely,

And await restoration of order. 

Thanks for reading this post that I wrote while sheltered in place. 

I hope that things soon start back toward normal. 

I'll try to write more, soon despite no trips outside of my space.
Though the rhyme schemes may become more informal. 

Special thanks to Columbus Restaurant History and Forgotten Michigan for providing information on the addresses of former Rax locations. 

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store