Recent dining restrictions taking me back in time

With our restaurant selections lately restricted to carryout, dining in Portales has become a lot like it used to be when I was growing up — except for the prices.

I can maybe remember a 35-cent burger growing up but mostly I would say they were 50 to 80 cents back then. The only sit-down dining available was often at the two truck stops and the drug stores with fountain and grill service.

The chain burger joints hadn’t come to town for the most part. I had heard of McDonald’s but I don’t think I got my hands on one of their burgers until junior high or high school on a trip to Albuquerque. It was alright but we had some pretty good burgers available at home with drive-ins like Doc’s, Pat’s, Luke’s, Dub’s and Mac’s, along with several drugstores with fountains and a grill.

A few years before we moved in off the farm, I was 9 or 10, we grew a vegetable garden for extra money. On Saturdays we would get up early while it was still cool and help Mom pick the garden. After an itchy morning of picking okra, squash and beans we would take the produce to town in the station wagon where we sold it at a local grocery market.

Mom usually treated us to a burger and tater tots and Luke’s Drive-In. We didn’t eat out too often so we loved that hamburger.

My mother made a great burger herself; she didn’t spend 25 years in the school lunch room and snack bar without getting a few skills. The best ones were the ones we ate in the field with Dad sitting on the tailgate. She fried them in a cast-iron skillet and steamed the buns in the skillet. She wrapped them in wax paper that soaked up some of the grease by the time we got to the field.

In high school nearly every day at lunch I had the same thing — jumbo cheeseburger, fries and cherry Coke at Pat’s Twin Cronnies. It cost me exactly $1.25 plus tax.

Later on we had a couple different places that had carhop service. One of them was located in a place that houses a restaurant that was advertising carhop service during the pandemic. Sitting there with my wife I told her it was just like the old days, except for the diverse and healthy menu and the fact that none of the hops were skating.

These days the best burger is the one I grill myself on my patio. If we’re having a burger at home that’s almost always the way it’s cooked. A little barbecue sauce, cheese, onion, green chile and maybe lettuce and I’m good. Don’t tell anyone the burgers are healthy turkey burgers.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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