Originally posted by MarkJerling Who remembers the roadhouse tray? I dug mine out and gave it a clean. This one is from the 1950's and I'm pretty sure my dad made off with it from The Red Windmill, in Port Elizabeth.
I recall those. A & W drive in restaurants used to use them. Back when I was a poor student, my GF at the time was complaining that I never took her to any fine restaurants.
Well, back then I had a buddy who worked at an ESSO gas station and they had a promotion. If you got a full tank of gas, then you would get a free A&W Papa burger bag with a little promotion sticker that gave the bearer a 35 cent discount off that 70 cent burger.
The gas stations kept them in a barrel and I told my buddy I was running short of money, and wanted to take my GF out for dinner. He reached down into the barrel and gave me two promotions. I then called my GF and invited her out to 'dinner'.
I called on her, she was all suited up, in a nice dress and there I was in my jeans and sweat shirt. She looked askance at me, and asked me where we were going. I said A & W. She didn't look impressed.
Anyways, we drove in cold silence to the A & W....I didn't have a lot of money after all, She ordered a chicken burger and I had to quickly correct her, as my promotions only were good for papa burgers.
We were in my old Volvo PV 544. and it started raining. The waitress brought out the meals on a tray which attached to the window.....and the window glass disappeared completely into the door, under the weight of the tray, the burgers, the fries and the 2 large mugs of root beer. Meal and tray went crashing down onto the concrete. The rain started pouring into the Volvo window, I ran around to the trunk to get an old towel to cover the windowless window and the trunk door handle came off in my hand.
It was not a good evening. All I can say is it was a good thing that this wasn't a first date.