Deep in the heart of Texas… before there was McDonald’s…. before there was Sonic…. before there was In-N-Out… there were Pig Stands.
Do you remember? If not, you can read all about it here. Or, read on if you – and your coronary arteries – dare:
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, teen-aged 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; it soon became a chain. (The slogan: “America’s Motor Lunch.”) Kirby and his partners made one of the first franchising arrangements in restaurant history. 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. Food historians believe that Pig Stand cooks invented deep-fried onion rings, chicken-fried steak sandwiches and a regional specialty known as Texas Toast.
(O.M.G: So much nutritional goodness!)
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Pig Stand Restaurant #41 on Calder Ave. in Beaumont, Texas – demolished in 2012 to make way for a convenience store.
But wartime gasoline and food rationing hit the Pig Stands hard. 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. The next year they had all disappeared.
On This Day in History, November 14, 2006, state officials closed 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. They owed the Texas comptroller more than $200,000 in unpaid sales taxes.
In 2007, state bankruptcy trustees found a way for one Pig Stand, in San Antonio, to reopen. It will probably never be as popular as it once was. Customers now have to get out of their cars and go inside to eat. Yet the restaurant remains a sentimental favorite of many Texans.
I love a good puzzle. It’s a trait I inherited from my mom, one I’ve passed on to my kids. When she did them, mom used a pencil and a well-thumbed paperback copy of Merriam Webster’s Crossword Puzzle Dictionary for those hard-to-decipher clues favored by sadistic puzzle constructors everywhere. Nowadays most of us do our crosswords online and the urge to Google such stumpers is nearly overwhelming. A paperback crossword dictionary? It’s a collector’s item.
On this the day as we welcome the first paying guests at our West Sacramento Airbnb, we also remember This Day in History, 1988 – with all the gory details herehere and here.
Not to worry though, 392 Midstream Lane looks nothing like Dorthea Puente’s Victorian at 1426 F Street.
Sacramento police and coroners remove a sixth body from the yard of the property on November 14, 1988.
A sign at the notorious house reads: ‘Trespassers will be drugged and buried in the yard’
Dorothea Puente at her trial.
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Photos and booking info for non-lethal Airbnb here.
I’m reading a novel called “gossip” by Beth Gutcheon. I’m always pleased and surprised when I find the origins of a word are not what I expected. From the book, p. 18:
“Did you know that the origin of the word gossip in English is “god-sibling?” It’s the talk between people who are godparents to the same child, people who have a legitimate loving interest in the person they talk about. It’s talk that weaves a net of support and connection beneath the people you want to protect.”
That’s a far cry from the usual understanding of the word as “trifling talk, groundless rumor” or “to talk idly about the affairs of others.”
<The full etymology of the term “gossip” can be found here.>
