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The coffee break podcast new hope naples3/31/2023 I’m instantly reminded of childhood “treat visits” to restaurants like the Ground Round and Friendly’s, where I’d color on my placemat and, if I was lucky, get dessert (always a Cone Head Sundae) before dinner. The deep red vinyl booths, wood paneling, patterned carpet, and the unmistakable whiff of restaurant/lounge mixed with fried food is a powerful combination. Inside the Bangor HoJo’s restaurant, which is tucked behind the renovated hotel and is only open during select hours, it’s quiet, even though it’s lunchtime, but I guess that’s to be expected when you’re located off the highway instead of downtown, and don’t offer drive-though. Welcome to the Bangor Howard Johnson’s restaurant! Four years later she became my wife.Ĭan you beat that?! A classic Ho Jo interior - windows, carpet, and brick walls. She replied “butter brickle.” I was not usually so bold but maybe it was the summer night, maybe it was because I was sort of taken with her, but I asked if I could have a taste. I went up to her and asked what flavor it was. I saw a pretty blond girl with two of her girlfriends and they were standing around with their ice cream cones. It was where young people often gathered. On a Friday evening just a few days before I turned 19, two friends and I drove to HoJo’s at Villanova, just off Philadelphia’s Main Line. to 7 a.m., at Milprint, a plant that, among other things, produced the packaging for Marlboro cigarettes. It was the summer after my freshman year in college. My boss, editor Mel Allen, also has a strong Howard Johnson’s memory. “I think I ordered it because it was such a pretty color.” It was the end of the school year, she was with her Brownie troop, and was excited to sit at the counter and order an ice cream. My mother remembers going to a HoJo’s for the first time in the early 60’s. The restaurant and lounge are located in the rear of the building.Ī mid-century cultural institution, the Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain in particular has a special spot in the memories of many Baby Boomers. The shape is familiar, but the former chain’s signature orange roof and turquoise cupola are gone. The Last Howard Johnson’s restaurant in New England is located behind the Howard Johnson Inn in Bangor, Maine. Today it’s both a Howard Johnson Inn and a restaurant (and lounge). The Bangor HoJo’s first opened in 1966, located immediately off Route 95 in Bangor, about 130 miles north of Portland. A third in Lake Placid, NY, closed in March, 2015. The other is a freestanding restaurant in Lake George, NY. The restaurants, as I’ve said, are another story. Today, the Wyndham Hotel Group has rights to the Howard Johnson name that’s still emblazoned on more than 400 Howard Johnson hotels. In the mid-1980s, the company underwent a series of changes, buyouts, and downsizing, and the restaurants and hotels were split into separate franchises. The 1960s and 1970s were a golden age for Howard Johnson’s, the restaurant/hotel with the orange roof, but by the end of the 1970s, competition from fast food chains like McDonald’s and climbing oil prices, which cut back on the old-fashioned American family road trip, would signal the beginning of the end. This included expanding to new states, opening restaurants on the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpikes, and adding hotels. In the automobile-fueled post-war years, Johnson was poised and ready to deliver friendly service to an American public that was desperate for a little fun and adventure. Quality and homemade taste were important to Johnson, and no doubt contributed to the brand’s steady success. By the 1930’s he had introduced the “Simple Simon and the Pieman” logo, and by 1935, there were 25 Howard Johnson’s ice cream stands in Massachusetts, with more expansion in the works. He had two stores when the stock market crashed in 1929, but he managed to hang onto them, and even added his name and products to a dairy bar on Cape Cod, which became very popular. So how did it all begin? In 1925, Howard Deering Johnson started his first soda fountain in the Wollaston neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts, with a focus on making superior ice cream. Do you remember all 28 delicious flavors? A Howard Johnson’s ad from a 1940 issue of Yankee Magazine boasted “Made by a Yankee for Discriminating Yankees”.
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