Bye Bye Big Boy

 

The closing this past weekend of the Shoney’s on Ft. Henry Drive in Kingsport means all my teen hangouts are now gone.

The Texas Steer closed in 1975.

The Beacon in the spring of 1959.

The Dutch Boy, Shorty’s, the Golden Dip, all gone.

Shoney’s barely arrived in time for my teen years. It opened January 20, 1965 – I was a senior at D-B – and almost immediately eclipsed Trayer’s, in the Beacon Drive In’s old location, as the favorite of local teens.

It combined the two attributes most prized by teenagers: a large dining room for post-movie meeting and greeting and eating, and a large bank of drive in slots, for cruising and schmoozing.

But with teen popularity comes trouble. The Times News reported the occasional fight, usually accompanied by a public intoxication charge.

And then there was this:

The Great Shoney’s Caper, which I wrote about in 2003.

 In my day when girls didn’t have dates, they’d get together, paint each other’s nails, do each other’s hair. When boys didn’t have dates, they’d get together, jump in a car and get into trouble.

This is the story of one of those nights.

I wasn’t there but I heard about it the Monday after it happened so the story has been making the rounds for decades. Lonnie Cole was there and he retold the tale the other morning. Here’s the way it went.

There were six of them, six boys, looking for something to do on a wintry Saturday night in Kingsport. They loaded into a delivery van that belonged to one of their dads and headed to Ridgefields. For a while they were content to sled down the hills and throw snowballs at each other. Good, clean fun. But after a while they grew bored with snow fun. And they also grew cold. So they crammed back into the van and headed for Shoney’s.

From the moment it opened in January 1965 Shoney’s was the place to go for Kingsport teens. Maybe it was the Strawberry Pie. Maybe it was the coffee. Most likely it was the fact that other teenagers were there. It was the place to go because it was where everyone went, a circular reasoning that only works in the world of teenage logic.

The six guys piled into a booth, ordered coffee and dessert, and began shooting the bull. After a few cups of coffee and a few cigarettes, one of the gang confessed he didn’t have any money.

Let’s call him Belushi because if someone had made a movie about Kingsport in the sixties, John Belushi would have played him.

So Belushi asked around the table if anyone could loan him some money so he could get out of Shoney’s.

As Lonnie Cole explains, Belushi never had any money, no one ever expected him to have any money. That’s just the way it always was with him. So the other guys just expected they would have to pick up his tab. But on this night, things were a little different.

As Belushi asked around the table, each of the guys in turn confessed that he too was broke and was counting on the generosity of another in the gang.

There was a silence.

Then Belushi barked, “I’ve got an idea. I’ll be right back.”

He headed to the bathroom and when he came back, his shoestrings were untied. “Let me sit on the end,” he demanded, and took his place on the bench seat.

“He lit up a cigarette and then let out with a scream and fell over backwards,” recalls Lonnie. Belushi began shaking and shimmering, kicking his legs so hard that his boots came flying off.

Once again there was a silence except this time it overtook the entire restaurant. People in other booths were standing on their seats, peering over to see what was going on. Belushi was still kicking, still shaking, his eyes rolled back in his head, his arms flailing away.

Suddenly the cook roared out of the kitchen, billfold in hand, sprinting to Belushi’s side where he pried his mouth open and shoved in the wallet. “He's having a fit, boys,” the cook explained. “This will keep him from biting his tongue.”

Without so much as a word among them, each of the boys grabbed an appendage and rushed Belushi toward the van. Someone opened the van’s back door, the four carriers plopped Belushi inside and the van took off.

“We were turning out of the parking lot and the Life Saving Crew was turning in,” recalls Lonnie.

As the van disappeared into the night, the six boys inside began laughing.

No one louder than Belushi.

XXX

There is a footnote to this story. And if Belushi is reading this, he’s learning it for the first time.

While Belushi was in the bathroom, plotting his escape, the others were paying the tab. They had money, they just didn’t let on to Belushi that they did.

So Shoney’s Police, you don’t have to come after Lonnie Cole. His account is clear. And so is Belushi’s.

And if you’ve made it this far in the story of the Great Shoney’s Caper, you’re probably wondering who Belushi was.

Belushi died a few years back so I think it out him now.

It was Dan Finucane.

XXX

Shoney’s was just one in a long line of teen hangouts in Kingsport.

Before Shoney’s, Trayer’s on Center Street, just west of where AAA is now, was THE drive-in for teens to cruise. Armour Drugs’ soda fountain was an after-school favorite; the Peggy Ann was a beloved late-night spot.

John Reed, who was five years ahead of me, recalls, “The Indian Grill, on Center Street near D-B, was a lunchtime hang-out.  The Beacon and the Texas Steer were drive-ins that folks hung out at night.”

Marietta Shankel says the favorite teen hangouts in the early fifties were the Texas Steer Drive-In, downtown on Center near the Kingsport Press, and the Golden Dip ice cream stand, on Fort Henry Drive near the current location of McDonald’s.

Doe Hood, who graduated from D-B in 1946, says there was a trio of places for teens to hang out in the forties. “In the morning before - and sometimes after - school, it was Red's Pool Room on Five Points.  The bowling alley next to the bus station was a good place to hang out. The Dew Drop Inn at the Hammond Bridge was a good place to go to find a fight.”