Today is Food Truck Day!

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A lively article on fast food by Addison Del Mastro tied in nicely with my Great Smith screen-side truck.

Del Mastro misses a big part of the timeline for fast food. He seems to think that fast food developed mainly as a result of American car culture, spurred by the Interstates.

Fast food and slow food developed together. If we’re talking about food as a money-making business, fast food came first. Subsistence farms and feudal plantations have been around forever, but those weren’t businesses. They worked on family and tribal loyalty.

Restaurants began as roadside stands serving refreshing drinks and hand-carried food for weary travelers. Restaurant = refresher.

Every culture has its own version of hand-carried food for workers and travelers: Pasties, pies, piroshki, papadzules, pemmican, Pop-tarts. (Most seem to begin with lip-smacking bilabial sounds!) The sandwich is a late and rather crude version of these self-contained edible packages.

Stand-up cafes were common near big factories and workplaces. In the vehicle era fast food vendors were often the drivers, not the drive-up window. Even now in big cities, lunch pushcarts do a good business.

So here’s the screenside Smith Truck in proper usage…

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Reading Del Mastro’s article again…

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There was another major development in midcentury America that pummeled hard work and business sense: the Interstate Highway System, which wiped out many scrappy, independent roadside businesses along the old state and U.S. highways.

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Manhattan had an excellent example in the ’50s. Stagg Hill Road was the former US 40 from Manhattan to Fort Riley. Stagg Hill had been bypassed by a modern fourlane with limited access. At that time there were still two restaurants along Stagg Hill, each representing a category. Jensen’s was a formal ‘family’ restaurant with cloth napkins and wicker baskets. My parents took the family to Jensen’s for the obvious purpose of learning Manners. Charco’s was an independent drive-in with its own special burgers and gimmicks. Both are gone now.

This is a 1970 topo map, at the southwest corner of Manhattan. I’ve emphasized Stagg Hill road in blue, and marked Jensen’s and Charco’s. You can see the new fourlane with no businesses along it.

I’ve also marked the original Polistra townsite, and pointed to the location of Cave Gas, another roadside business lost to the fourlanes.