Milkshakes and Bazooka gum

Dad still took us places. We didn’t do things as a complete family anymore, but me being the youngest I didn’t have any frame of reference about that because I was too little to ever remember us doing things with both my mother and father.

About 1973. Rocking a fabulous pantsuit and posing in  front of my Dad’s VW bug. Probably on our way to Bart’s.

My special place to go with Dad, usually just him and me, was Bart’s. Bart’s was, and is, a popular drive-in restaurant in my hometown that had been around since the 1950’s. One side of Bart’s sold hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, milkshakes and other delicious drive-in kind of food. The other side was a little convenience-like store where you could get some basic food items like milk and bread. And candy. 

I loved Bart’s. It was a special treat to go there for a milkshake. There were no seats at Bart’s. You drove up, walked up to the counter and ate and drank right there. Or you brought it back to your car. 

I remember being so small that I used to count the wads of gum people stuck under the counter because I couldn’t see over the counter.  Dad would order his coffee milkshake. He would order a strawberry one for me. I could never finish them. They were enormous.  Dad never used a straw. They all knew Dad there and he would make small talk with the owners, Bob or Bart Dillon, while he leaned against the counter. 

Mr. Dillon. He made plenty of my milkshakes when I was a little girl. Photo from barts-drive.com website.

I would hold my milkshake and go over to the connecting double sided glass door between the restaurant and the store. The door wasn’t used, but  I liked to push my face up against it to see through a peg board that was between the two panes of glass. I thought it was a special secret that I had discovered that there was a large poster of Santa Claus they were storing between the glass panes. I liked peeking through the holes to see Santa.