I’m using the ’52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History’ series as an aid in getting core ideas for my personal history this year. See the entire challenge on my Examiner.com article at http://exm.nr/gHGdwz I create an article about this series each Monday. Click subscribe (at the top) if you’d like to get my articles automatically delivered to your email inbox, or click the RSS icon to read my posts via a feed reader. These weekly challenges are authored by Amy Coffin of the We Tree blog and hosted on the GeneaBloggers website.
Here is the beginning of my memories about restaurants.
I don’t remember my early years and where I would go when we went out to eat, but I do remember when my friend’s dad would bring home hamburgers from the Tip Top fast food restaurant. Their hamburgers had a sauce on them that was delicious. I could have easily taken out the meat and eaten just the bun and the sauce. When he offered to get two for me, I was young and never dreamed that a person COULD order more than one for themselves. How funny is that! Ahhh innocence.
I remember sometimes walking down the street on a summer day with another friend to go to Tastee Freeze, and I’d get a Root Beer Freeze and hamburger. When I discovered the cool bliss of a Root Beer Freeze, I was a convert for life.
As a youth, I enjoyed going to Fullerton with my mom and dad and eating at Arnold’s Farm House. I didn’t like all the cafeteria-style food, but loved the melt-in-your-mouth, warm bran muffins oozing with butter. I had my first taste of Bleu Cheese Dressing there. We also enjoyed Hof’s Hut and Polly’s Pies. We went to El Patio for Mexican Food. There was a tiny little restaurant named Russell’s across from the movie theater in Long Beach. They made delicious, huge hamburgers and freezes—ahh, is there a pattern here? Once, my mother was taking me to the airport when I was in college, and we stopped there first. I almost missed my plane. I remember wondering if the stress was worth it.
I have great teen memories with my friends at various Pizza Parlors, McDonalds, Hof’s Hut and other quaint sandwich shops.
I loved being taken out to the Embers for prom and other special occasions. It was
F A N C Y. Although I felt awkward at first, I learned to love elegant environments and still do.
It’s interesting that as I ponder this subject, it’s the memories with PEOPLE that matter to me most, rather than the restaurant where we ate. I loved any place I ate when I was a mother of young children and could manage to have some time on my own with a girlfriend.
Here in Arizona when my second son was young, we took him to Organ Stop Pizza for their organ “show”. The pizza wasn’t the best, but the show was captivating to my young music lover.
We now go to Tia Rosa’s, Mimi’s Café, Macaroni Grill, Chiles, Panda Express, Costa Vida and Serranos, and there’s several other places we love. My husband and I usually order the same thing each time, but we love to be eating out together. It’s also fun to go out with friends or family. We are fortunate to have oodles of restaurants within a short distance from our home.
Well, that’s it for now. I am wondering, however, if any other bloggers got hungry while talking about restaurants.
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As founder of Family Tree Quest, people sometimes ask what tools I recommend for organizing and recording personal and family history. Here are my highest recommendations.
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