Choke 'em Down Lunch Room

That very unpleasant photo from Jackson MS clearly demonstrates just how little mankind has evolved from its Neanderthal ancestors.

JRP,

What an outstanding thread.

Just goes to show you what can develop when one guy "naively" posts what he thinks is merely a funny named diner, another guy reacts, rightly or wrongly, to that photo based on his own personal view, a whole slew of third parties tries to impose their will on what is appropriate or inappropriate, resulting finally in the original poster (that would be you) being inspired to dig up some remarkable photos depicting old Roadfood restaurants and the role they played in history.

Kudos to you Jim, for rising to the occasion rather than getting bogged down in the commentary.  Thank you for those excellent images and the thoughtful discussion that can be drawn from them.

My only frustration is that I am currently in New Orleans, 900 miles away from home, and unable to track down the location of that long gone diner.  Good luck and happy hunting to anyone who undertakes this joyous challenge.

Buddy

JRPfeff


This one is not fun and goes right to the point made at the top by jonjax71. 

This picture reflects the courage of these Civil Rights Protesters in fighting Jim Crow Laws in the deep south.  The term "Sit-in" did not have the peaceful connotation in the 1960's that it does today.  These protesters faced degradation and violence when they peacefully asserted their inalienable rights. I'm learning something this weekend.

The photo is from Jackson, Mississippi in 1963.

WI Historical Society:

Sit-in at Lunch Counter

Civil rights sit-in by John Salter, Joan Trumpauer, and Anne Moody at Woolworth's lunch counter. A crowd of people pours sugar, ketchup and mustard on them in protest.

Evidently it may be far from over and even closer to home for those who think the north is different than the south if this is true.

http://www.myfoxchicago.c...hers_accused_of_racism

When we were at the Smithsonian Museum of American History back in January, they were doing live reenactments/presentations about the counter sit-ins.  It was really fascinating to see people of all ages, a good two thirds or so of whom were not old enough to have been around to remember the fifties and sixties and the tumult.  I think it's entirely too easy to forget that that stuff happened, and not so very long ago.

Mosca


Wow. That's an awful lot to get from a photograph. I give your post "not long until removed for being needlessly confrontational."

It's really nothing more than geographical racism on the poster's part as opposed to needlessly confrontational.

Davydd

JRPfeff


This one is not fun and goes right to the point made at the top by jonjax71. 

This picture reflects the courage of these Civil Rights Protesters in fighting Jim Crow Laws in the deep south.  The term "Sit-in" did not have the peaceful connotation in the 1960's that it does today.  These protesters faced degradation and violence when they peacefully asserted their inalienable rights. I'm learning something this weekend.

The photo is from Jackson, Mississippi in 1963.

WI Historical Society:

Sit-in at Lunch Counter

Civil rights sit-in by John Salter, Joan Trumpauer, and Anne Moody at Woolworth's lunch counter. A crowd of people pours sugar, ketchup and mustard on them in protest.

Evidently it may be far from over and even closer to home for those who think the north is different than the south if this is true.

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/metro/well-known_chicago_bar_mothers_accused_of_racism

Try Indianapolis. In the 1953 a friend and I were refused service at several restaurants one evening because my friend was black -- although he said colored back then. We ended up eating at a White Castle. We were in the Air Force and just heading back from a short leave following our return from Korea.

I spent 1961-63 in SEA and Japan in the Army. One of my roomates in Japan in '62 was a big guy from Yazoo City MS who went absolutely nuts when James Meredith entered the University of Mississippi. His reaction to the shooting of Meredith will be left unquoted by me. I had been thru the south a couple of times on trips east from SoCal as a kid, and had seen the segragated facilities etc...but I had not been exposed to the direct segragationist thought that my fellow G I expressed. To say it was an awakening is a real understatment.

Now to the subject of the Old Roadfood Eating Places-

My grandmother had a 'cafe' on Cermack Rd. in Cicero, IL that focused on feeding the workers from the huge Western Electric factory located directly across the street. I know little about the place except that the building has been torn down aand there is now a strip-mall full of  Spanish speaking restaurants and stores. I would label them Mexican, but I think there are many Hispanic cultures represented now.

Here is the Cafe as it looked in 1924.. 

   

The inside was not famous for it's ambience. Here is my Grandfather (an engineer for Western Electric at the time) helping my Grandmother get set up for the day's meals. Note the coal stove on the right.
 
Saps- Thanks for the corrections.

 

Here's a 1953 dinner at Leske's Steak House in Madison.  This looks like a typical Wisconsin Supper Club meal, although the decimal point would be moved one place to the right for pricing today.



Leske's later moved to the end of Monona Drive and became Leske's Supper Club.  Next door was Leske's Liquor Locker, where I spent too much of my youth. 

The 1953 Leske's Steak House location at 2827 Atwood Avenue is now a sandwich and cupcake restaurant.  Heaven help us.

Al, that's Cermak Road.  Cermak and 22nd are the same.  I take that to work every morning.  I'm not too far from the old Western Electric Plant.

BuddyRoadhouse - This thread is becoming my own Seinfeld episode, with 3 or 4 or 5 different topics running in parallel and weaving together. Kind of interesting when they interact.

You correctly note that I did not immediately react to jonjax71's comments.  That was not self restraint, I was away from my PC.  But given the time until I read things and finally joined in, I had the opportunity to understand and embrace what he said. 

I tried to pull the thread back to neat old diners and was having fun, as I noted at the time.  But when I looked at the next set of images that sit-in photo jumped out.  I hijacked my own thread by dropping it in here.  It is jarring to view.

The later reports and anecdotes may prevent some morally superior sentiments by Northerners.  It wasn't just the Deep South that had racial problems during those times. 

I'm hoping there is a rational explanation for what reportedly happened in Chicago.  It really seems out of place for Chicago in this day and age.

Jim

I'm pretty sure jonjax71 is a he.

I hope there's a rational explanation as well but it seems that the distinction has been offloaded into such things as baggy pants and hair.  It was pretty ingenious of the kid to send his friend through with his pants on.

I didn't want to get in the mix but I hate to say that the "explanation" is probably just what it seems....the lady is racist...that's just what I gather from all reports. I saw this interesting piece on an experiment done recently about "shopping while black":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAkDHuimJRc

Getting back to food! Here's a cool old commercial for cheeseburgers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAkDHuimJRc

Nancy is correct, I am a he, Jonathan is my full first name.  I didn't realize that that the initial photo was in Belle Glade, FL, which I do know is south of the big Lake O. Although I am a native and life long So Cal resident-I'm in my late 50s, my wife of 34 years is Jahmaican and most of her family lives in Metro Miami and Ft Lauderdale so we have spent a lot of time there and have traveled between Tampa and Miami several times using various routes to explore the lay of the land.  I never attacked anyone in this pretigious forum, I simply wanted to clarify the motto of "we serve white and colored", which in itself is pardon the pun, a sign of the times that it was necessary to display
 
Our best friends are an Afro-Cuban couple who have been our neighbors for about 13 or 14 years. They told us about their uncles and other family members and friends who left Cuba in the early 1960s arriving to Miami encountering seperate bus-Greyhound & Trailways, facilities, rest rooms and segregated restaurants and lodging throughout Miami which is why so few Afro-Cuban or mulattoe Cubans stayed in Miami, they all located themselves in northern or western cities.  Signs that said, no colored, no jews, no dogs were common and that Black servants working on Miami Beach needed a special work permit so they could travel after dark. Also, there was only one beach for coloreds, it was on Key Biscayne next to the sewage treatment plant  There was prejuduce and racism in Cuba as everywhere else in the world, however it was not a legal Jim Crow system, it was bias of the heart-not of the law
 
 
 
 

JRPfeff


The later reports and anecdotes may prevent some morally superior sentiments by Northerners.  It wasn't just the Deep South that had racial problems during those times. 

I'm hoping there is a rational explanation for what reportedly happened in Chicago.  It really seems out of place for Chicago in this day and age.

Jim

 
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King junior often stated that the worse, ugliest racism and most vile people he ever encountered were not in the South, but in Chicago. He also said that at least in the South you knew where you stood whereas in northern cities it was much more of a hypocritical and two-faced situation

That's a funny name for a diner. Maybe one side was for whites and the other for blacks, divided by some partion.
My dad grew up in Hot Springs,Ark. in the 1920s and early 30s, before they moved back to Milwaukee.They used to have signs outside of town that said"Blacks,don't let the sun set on you in Garland County".They had the seperate water fountains  for whites and blacks,etc. Never really asked him much about it when i was growing up, but it was there. Never thought to ask him if there were any black students that attended St.John's Catholic School when he was there, that is if they had the tution money.
When my grandmother came down from Milwaukee  for a visit here to Texas in the 50s.They still had in Seguin,east of San Antonio, signs for restrooms that said colored men, colored women, white men,white women.
And Dr.Martin Luther King was right, at least in the south people were upfront about it.
Here in Texas in many areas, mexican americans expierenced the same thing that blacks did.
I do like the old photos anyways.

http://gizmodo.com/538978...-king-of-the-photoshop

jonjax71
  I never attacked anyone in this pretigious forum,

I just want to clarify, that I did not feel attacked, either. I think that my point might have been overly nuanced, and perhaps not clear enough.

Regardless; I dropped it, and only replied here to make sure that you knew I had no hard feelings. We are in agreement on the subject, and only differ in how to express it.

I'm still looking for an answer.  Have we narrowed it down to Hyde Park?

JRPfeff


As you can probably tell, I am having way too much fun with this.  The images in the WI Historical Society gallery are not limited to coming from within the state.  This one is from Chicago in 1932.



Here a challenge to the  Chicagoland members of The Contingent.  Identify the location of this restaurant, determine what is there now, eat there and post a report if it a restaurant. 

Added clues - the photo was donated by "McCormick - International Harvester."

WI Historical Society:

A "Tailoring and Remodeling" shop and restaurant are in the foreground at the entrance to a bridge, while a large utility pole with power lines, a number of tall apartment buildings, and a smokestack are in the background. The bridge may be part of Chicago's elevated train system.

Yep, definitely Hyde Park, as I guessed on Sunday. In fact, I'm going to narrow my guess down to either 55th or 57th Street. Am I right?

Bob,

I really don't know.  I'm counting on you to find that restaurant.

Jim

Cholie's Pizza - 1601 E 53rd St, Chicago, IL 60615?

Morry's Deli - 5500 S Cornell Ave, Chicago, IL 60637?

Those are some great photographs. I wonder if BB ever had any "warm mince" or gooseberry pies? I know I've never even seen any offered that I'm aware of.

Found it. 

I finally noticed the 4885 on the tailor shop. So I Google-mapped "4885, Chicago." 

My second hit was 4885 S. Chicago Beach Dr.  The El-train overpass looked similar.  After looking around a bit I found this. 

No restaurant.  Lake Park Avenue now runs through that location.

MilwFoodlovers


Those are some great photographs. I wonder if BB ever had any "warm mince" or gooseberry pies? I know I've never even seen any offered that I'm aware of.

I tried some gooseberry pie at Jerre Anne's Cafeteria in St. Joseph, Missouri, about a year before they went out of business.

Bloody awful.  Overly tart, bitter, absolutely nothing to recommend it.  The only reason I ordered it was because my Mother in Law spoke of so warmly of eating the stuff as a child.  Life must have been totally miserable if gooseberry pie is what she remembers as the culinary high point of her youth.

Buddy

Add Gooseberry Pie to Bobbi's Smoke Day 2010 offerings. 

You will like it.  Or else!

That's one helluva challenge, but if anyone is up to making gooseberry palatable, it's Bobbi!

Buddy

Jim, you're very close with that color photo that you found, but I don't think that you're quite there. I may be wrong but, to my knowledge, Lake Park Avenue has always been in that spot; I don't think any buildings were torn down in the '50s or '60s to put it in. Anyone know for sure? Also, the railroad overpass ( the former Illinois Central RR, not the "L" ) in the b&w photo doesn't quite match the one in the color picture. It's definitely Hyde Park, though... within walking distance of the Museum of Science and Industry. 

JRPfeff


Found it. 

I finally noticed the 4885 on the tailor shop. So I Google-mapped "4885, Chicago." 

My second hit was 4885 S. Chicago Beach Dr.  The El-train overpass looked similar.  After looking around a bit I found this. 

No restaurant.  Lake Park Avenue now runs through that location.

So will The Original Pancake House across the street suffice?
http://maps.google.com/pl...inal-pancake-house-the

JRPfeff looks like you're right. Here's a more indepth answer by some Chicagoans:
http://lthforum.com/bb/vi...c.php?f=14&t=26461     

Some food-related photos from old Saint Louis.

Dixie Sandwich Systems:



Kroger: a daycare center occupies this location now.  Iron Barley is next door.



Soulard Fruit: this location is now a wine shop



Sweetshop: location unknown but thought to be on The Hill