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Aw, shit. I was hoping for stale food.

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signage - stupid

I sorta knew Dave Thomas years before he opened the Wendy's chain.

Dave started his career in the restaurant business by going to work for Phil Clauss, who owned the Hobby House restaurant on the corner of Barr Street & Cottage Street in downtown Fort Wayne. Phil also owned the Hobby Ranch House, located on North Anthony, and the Pancake House on Lincoln Highway East.

Yes, that's the same Lincoln Highway that goes through Lancaster. It was US 30, and it ran from coast to coast.

One Of The First KFC Franchises

Phil was one of the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees. He sat on the board of directors of KFC, he came up with the KFC logotype showing the colonel's portrait, and he came up with the bucket to deliver chicken in.

Before McDonald's opened, we would eat Sunday dinner at the Pancake House. Despite the name, the Pancake House was one of the largest drive-in restaurants I've ever seen, probably running 4 acres in size. You could fit 3 Sonic restaurants on their lot.

I collect license plates.

No, I don't physically amass embossed sheets of steel. I take pictures of them. It's much less physically demanding than to have to fight with rusty screws, and I imagine that some people would get upset and give chase if I did that.

If I recall correctly, all three of these plates were collected in Lancaster County last summer.

My first wife, Em, was a real fan, and would catch "Love Bug" every time it was on TV. There are people who buy white bugs and put circular "53" decals on them. This seems a little less blatant, but just as much fun.

And I have to admire the guts of someone who not only admits that he's looney, but that the self-confidence to admit that he's the third person to request "Loony" plates from the DMV. Don't forget, some people will spell it "Loonie" - although others would say they're loons for doing that.

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She rose on her toes as the elevator began to move. "Ooooh," she squealed, "I've been geesed!"

The handsome gentleman to her side looked at the cute buxom redhead in the form-fitting sweater. "You mean," he correctly her softly, "that you've been goosed."

She gave him an icy glare. "I can count!"

Commercial Gooseberries

According to the intertubes, it appears that you can buy several different cultivars of gooseberries. I've never seen them for sale in nursery stores, though, and never heard of anyone speak of deliberately raising them. I've only run across wild gooseberries.

My maternal grandmother had a rental house about 100 yards from her own residence, which we called "the strawberry house" and just as you might expect, there was about every fruit on that property that you could imagine except strawberries. We always went over to pick cherries, and sometimes for peaches or wild grapes, although we had plenty of wild grapes growing in the fencerows.

January used to mean tailgate fruit in our family. Sometimes, we'd buy citrus from the FFA. They'd sell half-cases of navels, valencia, and red rose grapefruit ahead of time, then buy a truckload at once to get a good price.

Buying from the FFA, though, was problematic, because teenagers sometimes were irresponsible. If the fruit arrived on Thursday, and the teenager had a full weekend planned, it might be Monday before you got your fruit, and in the meanwhile, it'd be sitting in some barn somewhere, or in the back of a pickup, and it would freeze.

Learning Responsibility

You didn't know that when you got your fruit, and while the first oranges you ate would be delicious, a week later, they'd be turning brown and putrid from having frozen. It was much safer to buy from the X and Y citrus company - I can't remember the letters. They'd mail us a calendar every year, showing the dates they'd scheduled, and put a small notice in the paper for the benefit of new customers.