Fielder’s Choice
I read a story in The Daily Journal last week about the Bonanza restaurant closing.
I ate there on one of my first-ever trips to Tupelo, when it was a two-lane road trip from Hamilton, Ala. Bonanza was there long before all the development in north Tupelo that you see now adjacent to I-22. It opened in 1973.
The story, written by Dennis Seid, featured an employee, Albert Fears, who had been at the restaurant since it opened.
“If I’ve been the captain of the ship, Al’s been right there beside me,” said Marshall Cotton, the restaurant’s general manager. “He’s been here every day. Forty-five years behind that grill, working up to 50 hours a week ... that’s a lot of steaks.”
The last time I went to Bonanza was after Pam and I met, while I was living in Fulton. We had dinner there with her mom and dad.
In doing a little research, I also saw an AP story about the Bonanza chain.
The closure in Tupelo leaves 10 Bonanzas in the continental U.S. and five in Puerto Rico. Bonanza was founded in 1963 by veteran and “Bonanza” actor Dan Blocker, and it had around 600 locations nationwide at its peak in 1989. It’s now owned by FAT Brands Inc., which bought it in 2017.
This column is not about TV shows, but “Bonanza” was one of my favorites.
Even though the Tupelo Bonanza restaurant was part of a corporate chain, reading about its closure made me think of some of the local businesses I recall while growing up in Hamilton, Ala.
And I’ve heard longtime Holly Springs residents talk about the same things – restaurants, hangouts, movie theater, car dealerships, service stations, etc.
After school and before basketball games, we would usually go to McCracken’s Dairy Freeze. I loved those cheeseburgers, and the ice cream; it would melt in your mouth.
We had some other good local establishments like Bedford’s Burgers and Coleman’s Bar-B-Que.
We once had a drive-in theater in Hamilton, and after it closed, there was still the one in Gu-Win (not Guin). I’m pretty sure it is still open today. Gu-Win is between Guin, Ala., and Winfield, Ala. At the 2010 census, population was 176.
We always bought our furniture locally at Loden’s, family-owned and family-operated.
There was very little out-of-town shopping back then. The dollars were spent at home with people we knew – our friends and neighbors.
Growing up 12 miles out of Hamilton, we had a couple of home-owned, home-operated gas stations just a mile or two from our house.
I bought a lot of “nabs” (peanut butter crackers), M&Ms and Three Musketeers there. And I’m pretty sure that’s where I developed my love for Dr. Pepper.
Those stations are where we filled up our vehicles and got gas for our lawn mowers. I think gas was about 70 cents a gallon in 1979, the year I graduated from high school.
While there are a few things businesswise I like about year 2018, there are more things I miss from the 1970s and 1980s.
We can’t go back. We have to go forward. But thank goodness, we have the good old days we can talk to our children and grandchildren about while a cell phone is attached to their hands.