Adventure Car Hop, Revered 1950s Monument, Rediscovered.

Should you be constructing a memorial to the Golden Decade of Rock and Roll here in Boston, your temple might closely resemble the Adventure Car Hop in Saugus.

Growing up in Greater Boston during the 1950s and 60s, we were barraged nightly with a jingle which you,  like I, can most surely remember and sing today.

"Adventure Car Hop is the place to go
For food that's always right.
Adventure food is always just so.
(You'll relish every bite!)
Out on Route One in Saugus,
Come dressed just as you are.
Adventure, where the service is tops,
And you never get out of your car."

Adventure was not the only car hop in the area, I recall other ones at Fresh Pond in Cambridge, in Natick, in Medford, and in Hampton Beach, but I am certain there were many more.  The Adventure advantage was the region’s most famous disk jockey, Arnie Ginsburg, whose show on WBOS in 1958 opened with his signature tune.

"Gather 'round, everybody; 'cause you're about to hear

The show that's gonna make you / smile from ear to ear

It's Arnie Ginsburg / on the Night Train show

At 16-hundred...on your radio." 

Arnie dropped the last sentence in 1958, when he moved his show to WMEX, AM 1510. Here is  Freddie Boom boom Cannon from Lynn singing the Arnie Ginsberg theme from WMEX radio, the most popular rock & roll station in Boston in the '50s and early '60s. Freddie appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand more times than any other artist. I last saw him play at the Revere Beach Centenary a few short years ago. 

Perhaps his most creative promotion for Adventure Car Hop was the Ginsburger, as recounted by bobstudley01821in a Yahoo Group of formerlynners.

“Hi there, this is Arnie Ginsberg telling you that Adventure Car Hop presents for the first time anywhere the GINSBURGER!  That’s right; the Ginsburger is now being served at Adventure Car Hop.  I designed it, I planned it, I tested it, but you’re going to eat it.  And what a delicious mouthful it is.  And adventure Car Hop is serving the Ginsburger on a record which you get to keep for your very own.  If you say Woo-Woo Ginsberg with your order, you get another Ginsburger free of charge.  So how can you miss, stop by the Adventure Car Hop, Route One in Saugus!”

With these promotions, on a summer night Arnie could draw a couple of thousand teenagers to the place.

A couple of years ago, driving up Route 1 from Boston, I tried to remember exactly where Adventure Car Hop (now long gone) had been located.  No one I asked could recall either. With the advice of Arnie Ginsburg, I recently located the site and recorded the location on my iPhone.  If you copy @42.485481,-71.018295 into Google Maps you find yourself in the parking lot adjacent to the Continental, which is at 266 Broadway (Rt. 1) in Saugus. 

 

I thought I’d give you the coordinates in case the Continental is replaced some day in the future, as have many other Route 1 favorites.  By the way, if you do use these coordinates with Google Maps, the satellite view shows you the parking lot quite clearly.  The street view  points you toward the restaurant, but panning to the right shows you  the correct location

 Woo-Woo Ginsburg!

Fight Obesity, Revive Sadie Hawkins Day

Our current national campaign against obesity  looks backwards to an earlier day when our grandparents kept their weight down by walking everywhere, performing manual labor, avoiding fast foods, and chain smoking several packs of cigarettes a day.

My town, Amesbury, hosts innumerable fitness activities including the annual “mud run,”, so I recently suggested to Mayor Thatcher W. Kezer III that he revive the Sadie Hawkins Day Race.

Sadie was a creation of  Amesbury’s Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, in times auld lang syne one of the most popular comic strips in the world. Sadie, the “homeliest gal in the hills,” grew tired of waiting for the fellows to come a courtin’.  Her father was worried about Sadie living at home for the rest of his life, so he decreed the first annual Sadie Hawkins Day, a foot race in which the unmarried gals pursued  Dogpatch’s  bachelors, with matrimony the consequence of capture.

Indeed, some  ideas have consequences.  Beginning in 1937, Sadie Hawkins Day races were held at hundreds of high-school and college campuses, where they were considered a woman empowering rite, long before the modern feminist movement began.

Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg, once Boston’s most popular rock and roll disk jockey, tells me these races were held regularly at Wellesley College, now better known for its distinguished faculty than its fleet-footed students.

Our local race could start at Al Capp’s house in South Hampton, NH, ending at the newly dedicated Al Capp Amphitheatre in downtown Amesbury, where Mayor Kezer could join the new couples in Holy Matrimony.  

Combat obesity! Promote family values! Organize a Sadie Hawkins Day Race in your town!
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As for my walking, working, and non-smoking grandparents, when they were my age three of them were dead, the men for almost two decades. Go figure.     

Backroads of Provence

Our former neighbors in Portsmouth spend much more time in Provence than we can, but are considerate enough to put their experiences into a blog so we can all share them. Please join us.  For a sample, you might read their thoughts on the Sunday Market in Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue; this post is our favorite (because it quotes both Lee-Ann and I).

Alternatively, consider their most recent post, “Tired of white linens, sommeliers, and Michelin stars? Consider lunch at Le Castelas, a working goat farm, for another kind of Provençal dining experience.”

Susan names her blog the “Modern Trobadors, ” described  thusly. “Trobador" comes from langue d'oc, the Old Provençal language. It means "finder or researcher" and is likely the root of "troubadour," a strolling minstrel in Southern France in the 12th c.  The Modern Trobadors research all things Provence: its world-renowned food and wine, its writers and artists, its tremendous tourist appeal…. From the prosaic to the profound, the practical to the quixotic, we provide news, information, advice, opinion, and, we hope, a wee bit of inspiration.

Critics claim that Peter Mayle’s excellent books have overly-popularized Provence. Should you agree, I discovered through the Irish Times a delightful sounding  new place in neighboring Languedoc, Château les Carrasses. “Dubliner Karl Hanlon used to work for Bank of Ireland.    Now he and his family live in Languedoc, where he has just opened a boutique hotel, holiday village and private member's club.” 

Read about it here, and please report back  if you try it. Google maps places it about two hours from Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue.

Can MIT People Really Walk on Water by 2030?

My classmate, Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70 identifies a potential problem with the new MIT campus plan in his post "Arrogance" reproduced below.  It appears to me that they also crop  my Dad's old police beat, Union Square in Somerville, off the top of the map. Pourquoi?

 The evolving plan for the campus is newly up on a website, MIT 2030: envisioning our future campus. There are many points of interest, particularly the graphic shown on the Process tab.
The circles indicate where you can go by walking away from the Great Dome for 5, 10, or 15 minutes.

Note that all the circles extend into the Charles River. There are several interpretations.