When the final Howard Johnson’s closed in Lake George, N.Y., final week recollections of previous HoJo’s encounters flooded again.
I’m guessing it did for lots of New Englanders who craved their clam strips and 28 flavors of ice cream.
McDonald’s killed HoJo’s, some say.
The Howard Johnson’s chain, 1,000 retailers sturdy within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, was magical. At least it was to your resident archivist. Today’s “From the Archives” is a quick reminiscence from the previous for a restaurant and the marginally dyslexic amongst us.
Let me clarify.
My now 93-year-old father would take me to Red Sox video games within the late Sixties when Elston Howard, George Scott, Ken Harrelson, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Lonborg, Reggie Smith and extra lived the “impossible dream” of virtually going all the best way.
The deal was I’d wiggle to the entrance of the road for bleacher seats — I swear $8-a-seat sticks in my thoughts — and he’d deal with me to ice cream at HoJo’s close by on the best way residence. I by no means instructed him, however I used to be joyful simply to take a seat within the bleachers. I can nonetheless hear some folks in my thoughts razz “Hawk” Harrelson for having lengthy hair exhibiting out his cap.
Who cares? I assumed to myself. I liked these video games and nonetheless do.
But one evening after the sport, I ordered a blueberry sundae. What I actually wished was a soda. A clump of vanilla ice cream slathered in blueberry pie filling atop a tall glass of bubbly water infused with syrup.
Instead, I used to be served a large sundae that I struggled to complete. I felt like a spoiled glutton.
Times had been tight. I wished to be an excellent companion and never ask for something. I introduced my baseball glove to catch a homer (it by no means occurred till I did snag a towering foul ball alongside the first-base line a long time later with my children watching.)
But I saved kicking myself for years for mixing up my HoJo’s specialties. I made an identical mistake a number of years earlier after I requested for a microscope for Christmas as a substitute of a telescope. I wished to take a look at the celebrities, nonetheless do, not my hair or spit my brother and I made a decision to look at. We had been simply making an attempt to make one of the best of a mistake.
The HoJo’s waitress congratulated me on such a thin child downing a mammoth sundae. I needed to. How may I waste this uncommon outing?
HoJo’s was a deal with. A secure place to drag over on highway journeys — we took rather a lot again then, however I’ll save that for one more day.
Change is fixed. Time is relative. I recite each to myself every day. But recollections are perpetually. I’ll miss Howard Johnson’s. Here’s a number of extra pictures from our archives and all emails for future concepts — or your recollections — are welcome to [email protected].
Source: www.bostonherald.com”