Production costs for this program have been made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by vote of the people, November 4th, 2008 [Music] Drive-ins came into being when people got in their cars and went on vacation and it was a way to take the family out to dinner without having to, you know, you could bring the kids in their jammies, they could order and you could eat in the car, and it was a low-cost way for families to eat out.

But, you know, there was a time in our country, I think, when people started being on the move and they could afford to take a driving vacation across the US or to, you know, the neighboring state for vacation.

And it was, I think, an outcome of that, you know, "Drive the USA in the Chevrolet" kind of thing.

It's a piece of Americana.

You hear about Route 66 and how there were drive-ins along the way that have came and gone.

Drive-in restaurants, I mean, it was a place to get out and about and, you know, back in 1952 not a lot of people ever went out anywhere to eat, we never did.

I think drive-ins in general were sort of gathering places after games and in the summertime.

People would drive in there and half of it was to look and see who else was in the parking lot.

It was just a fun atmosphere.

It was different than going into a restaurant.

You could just be in your car, you could be relaxed, and you didn't have to dress up, you could just head out and get something.

[Music] [Music] You know it goes back to the Black Hills of South Dakota where my dad was coach and athletic director until World War II came and the athletic program was dropped and he had to find out something else to do.

So he got into the insurance business and we moved from the Black Hills, Spearfish to Brooking, South Dakota, ended up thinking hey, what else can I do, particularly in the summertime, and he had heard about these restaurants, drive-in restaurants.

So Bemidji was the place that we started the restaurant in 1952 and the whole concept was new.

I mean you have microphones where you stop and order over the microphone and we were the only place out in, you know, Highway 2 West.

I was 12 at the time.

The Red Onion was the name they picked.

This color, the stripes, is very unique and to our knowledge there wasn't even anywhere I think that had that whole concept.

My name is Trish Quistgaard.

My name is Robyn Hansel Schulke.

My name is Connie Griffin Blackburn.

I was Connie Griffin at the time of working at The Red Onion.

When I was a teenager one of my first jobs was working at The Red Onion Drive-In.

I worked at the Red Onion the year between my junior and senior year in high school, 1966.

Well it was on the edge of town, it was a big open field basically with a dirt driveway.

And then, of course, the posts and the speakers were there and then the little red and white striped building.

There was parking behind and picnic tables where people could take their food out of the car and eat there or take it home.

Well I guess it was sort of a right of passage for a lot of people to work in places like that at the end of high school or in my case I guess it was the first two summers, two or three summers there, anyway.

So it was kind of like family because you were all enclosed in the workspace and the customers were outside and you were quite bonded by the end of the summer with your fellow workers.

The 100 pound bag of potatoes was there waiting for us every morning when we got to work and that was our first job.

And there was a cutter on the wall with a lever that you pulled down and each potato went in that contraption on the wall.

You pulled it down and the fries came out cut and they went into a vat of water with some sort of salt or preservative to keep them from changing color or whatever.

So that was the beginning of the shift.

They drive-up, you know, the speakers we had seven of them, we had somebody on the speaker inside.

May I have your order?

And some people were so confused about this newfangled microphone on a post that you pulled up to and one fellow I recall got out of his car and put his face right inside that microphone and yelled can you hear me?

We had hamburgers, we had french fries, and one of the specialties were baked beans and people loved baked beans, home baked beans.

We'd cook them all night and, you know, that and that along with what we call the deluxe hamburger, which we had a special sauce.

This I got while I was working there and it's called Mike's dressing and I have no idea who Mike is and no one else seems to know either.

I think the cook at the time, Vivian, who was there for years may have written this out, and it goes on it's two-sided little note and the first ingredient is a gallon of Miracle Whip.

So you know where we're going from there.

Four bottles of chili sauce, then vinegar and worcestershire and then on the back there are two cubes of roquefort and a few other minor detailed things, but.

You know this was Greek friends of ours in South Dakota that came up with that recipe.

And another thing we had to do is prep those boxes.

I remember folding boxes like crazy to get them all ready to just pull out and put on the counter to get filled with the food and drinks.

When someone picked me up they always had to roll down the windows in the car because I had the french fry smell on my clothes and my body.

So the first thing I would do is go home, take a shower.

1960, for example, the Minnesota Vikings were founded.

The Vikings chose Bemidji State College to do their summer training and so they would be there the whole summer months.

We got to know them.

I remember one guy, by the name of Don Joyce, was a lineman.

I mean the guy was about 310 lbs and he'd order five of what we call the deluxe hamburgers, lettuce and tomato and so, and he canned them right there on the spot.

When we really got busy, even after 8:00 at night, the Vikings, in particular Tommy Mason who was a real high draft choice and Gordy Smith was another one he was a tight end, they'd come in and help us.

Fran Tarkenton had his convertible and so my cousin who carried the order out spilled a malted milk on his lap and he was fuming.

When they sold it in, I think, in the early 1980's.

Yeah, it was a fun place to work.

Like I said, the gals were fun to work with.

It was fun to work in a place that had characters so there was always a lot of conversation.

We had a fun time.

Some would say probably too much fun.

I'm Bonnie Schoenfelder, and I was one of the children of John Schoenfelder who founded Mr. Bunn's restaurant, a drive-in restaurant, in Bemidji, Minnesota in the late 60's.

Well it was located south of Bemidji and it had been a Cream King before it was purchased by my father.

And he purchased the restaurant primarily, I would say, to provide employment for his numerous children.

There were 10 of us.

And that was about the time McDonald's started, but they didn't have it in Bemidji, they had it in Minneapolis.

And we used to drive through occasionally going to Rochester to visit my grandparents and we'd always stop at McDonald's.

And that fascinated my father and he thought well, if McDonald's can do a 19 cent hamburger, 19 cents can you believe that, we could have that in Bemidji on a smaller scale.

So that was the origin of the idea.

There were what we call fry cooks in the back that did the hamburgers and the hot dogs and various things and then there were window servers.

My favorite was to be in the back.

I liked the fry cook part, I didn't like the window, but we had to all take our turn.

People are funny when it comes to food.

Sometimes they can get pretty cantankerous and they always want something special and of course in a restaurant like that you're limited as to what kind of alterations you can make and I just preferred the, I liked flipping burgers better.

And then various antics of my father's who used to pack up hamburgers in a bag and throw them to the engineers on the trains that went by, a little advertising.

He was always into experimenting, so he would take a foot long hot dog and then he would have the end of it together and he'd slice it into four quadrants, all still connected, and then throw it in the deep fryer and then the hot dog would crinkle all up and make little round circles and then you'd serve that on a hamburger bun with lettuce and tomato and so forth, and it was very popular.

I think we only owned the restaurant for about 4 years.

I'm Rita Albrecht, I live in Bemidji, and my husband Mike and I owned the A&W here in Bemidji for 11 seasons.

We bought the restaurant in 1988 and we sold it in the fall or midsummer of '98.

The original A&W in Bemidji was built by Vern and Derva Wrolstad and it was on the corner of Paul Bunyan Drive and 23rd Street.

But they moved it over to where it was on Irvine Avenue and Paul Bunyan Drive.

I believe the original A&W started here in 1946 and Vern and Derva were the original owners.

There's still a lot of folks around Bemidji who worked for them and they often tell stories about that.

I'm Janet Altman, I worked at A&W as a carhop.

I'm Kaye Mack and I worked at A&W as an indoor waitress and a cook.

I'm Joy Johnson and I worked at Bemidji's A&W restaurant as a carhop.

Derva would show up early in the morning, she'd come in and do crossroad puzzles and cryptoquip while she had her cup of coffee and then she was just like a little whirly derby running around.

She did kind of everything .

She was very involved and then Vern was more in the background.

He would check out the tills at night or over the course of the day did the ordering, that kind of thing.

He mostly hung out downstairs where supplies were stored.

From my perspective, it was one of my first jobs, and it was probably the most fun job I had.

And Derva would allow us to have fun until she got a little upset with us, then she'd say get back to work girls or whatever, but they allowed us, really they allowed us to have fun.

It was a wonderful job.

At the A&W in Bemidji at the time, there was a carport, we called it the carport, and it had 24 stalls for drive-up, for cars to drive up, and mics that they could order on.

And then there were 12 additional drive-up areas outside of the carport.

It was kind of unique cause they also had an indoor restaurant with about eight booths and four tables and had indoor dining.

When I was there in the 70's nearly everyone who worked there was one of my best friends.

Kaye and I are sisters and my two younger sisters also worked there, so it was kind of a rite of passage for my family, the girls of my family.

We all enjoyed working there.

Vern and Derva were so good, they could anticipate what weekends were going to be extremely busy, so they would have very likely three carhops on those really busy weekends.

Someone at mic taking the orders, someone, we called it, working in, they would, after the cook got the orders ready, they would get everything on the tray, like Joy said, pass it to the carhops, and then two cooks, not to mention the waitresses in the inside restaurant.

So it was really just a busy, oh and I forgot to mention a separate person just on mugs.

And those trays were heavy, especially when you had all root beer mugs, you know.

Yeah, again, I don't remember it being a problem but we carried heavy trays.

Cuz those mugs were thick.

You know if you've ever seen an A&W root beer mug they're pretty heavy, pretty sturdy, and you get eight or ten of them on a tray, that's pretty heavy.

And the the change belts jingled when you walked so when there was three or four carhops out there that's what you would hear is the jingling of the coin aprons.

Nobody told us how much change to give, you know.

It's not like today where you put it into a cash register and it tells you to give them back two dollars and twelve cents.

We had to do the math on our own all the And at the end of the day they always reconciled the belts with the receipts and you had to be a good mathematician to figure out, you know, how to give change all the time.

Say it was $2.87, the order, they'd go click, click, click, with three pennies, there's 90 and a dime there's $3 you gave me, you know, so they just did it on the fly making this change.

If there weren't any customers, we found lots of things to do, unfortunately.

Some of them really weren't very appropriate.

I remember getting depantsed.

Yes.

Well, if you're walking down the carport, holding a tray of food and you have your uniform on, which were awful.

Elastic polyester pants.

Orange and brown.

Elastic polyester and you could pull someone's pants down, but they couldn't pull them back up cuz they had their hands on their trays and so you had to like waddle over to one of the little stands and set down the food and then pull up your pants.

Vern and Derva sold that restaurant to Shirley and Gary Bringelson, who owned it I believe 9 years, and so we bought it from them in the winter of '88 and opened our first season in 1988.

There's Mike and Rita.

One of the promotions that we did, that people in the community really liked, was once a month in the summer we had cruise night.

And cruise night was when all the old cars would come in and park in the parking lot and we'd give them all a number and then we'd have People's Choice Award.

We had little dash cards that said A&W Cruise Night that we would give to all of the local car owners so that they could come and get a dash card for their car.

And we played music, you know Oldies music outside, and had a photographer come.

So it was always a very festive event and a lot of fun to have Cruise Night at the A&W.

You know when you're working out in the garden and it's hot and sweaty and you know it's 80° and you think, Friday night, I'd just like to go get a root beer float or root beer freeze.

You don't have to clean up, you can just drive in and get your food delivered to you.

So that's the other convenience I think of having a drive-in.

I'm Karla Hollinshed and I am one of the four daughters of Fred and Charlotte Holmquist.

And I am Sandy Gilmore, I'm the third daughter, yes, third daughter of Fred and Charlotte Holmquist.

Dad did own what became the Corral Drive-in east of the river.

My parents bought it in 1957 from the Liedeks who had operated it from the early 40's to '57.

And then Steak 'N Taters which was west of the river.

I think he just ran that for a couple of years and then sold it to the Watland family.

The one that they owned for 40 years was an A&W Drive-In and it was built just east of the Washington Avenue Bridge.

No, Washington Street Bridge.

Yeah, Washington Street Bridge.

In Brainerd.

Originally there were gas stations on either end of the block, so it had just a little spit of land right in the middle and that very much changed over time.

Both mom and dad just had that entrepreneurial spirit and I think Dad wanted to be his own boss.

Both mom and dad wanted to be there, you know, they had five kids how perfect and it really became a family business.

We all worked there.

I mean I remember going down and cleaning trays and washing mugs when I was six, five or six years old.

Well, he very much modernized it, bought out one of the gas stations so he could put in a real drive with dynamite phones.

The modern technology of the 60's where you could just stay in your car and press a button and place your order and have it brought to you.

Like '62 or so I believe is when we think he put it in.

Well it was before any other fast food was in Brainerd.

Absolutely and there were some wild summers there in the 60's when the racetrack went in, and I mean those crowds would come in.

That was pre-McDonald's, pre anything like that.

There just weren't that many amenities and places for people to go to eat.

I mean we were crazy busy during those summers.

Nothing fast food and yet we made everything per order.

We didn't have anything sitting around.

The order came in and we made it fresh.

It went out on the drive fresh.

Again the food industry changed so much too just in terms, I mean originally dad was buying potatoes and cutting his own french fries and buying fresh hamburger from Super Value across the street.

And he was down there every morning at 5:30 in the morning.

Cleaning everything in the kitchen, emptying the fryers, doing the grill, cleaning the ice machine, cleaning the mug washer, the ice cream machine.

But meanwhile mom would be up the house.

She would be counting the receipts from the prior day, the deposit to the bank and getting the change ready for the day.

And then she'd come down.

Smile!

It is gorgeous out, a beautiful beautiful day.

By, you know, 9:45 or so have the checkbook ready to dad so he can run to the store if he needs to and then she would start her cleaning, getting everything cleaned up on the fountain side of things and ready to go and then the crew would arrive and they'd go out and they'd wash the phones and the picnic tables and clean the windows and then before you know it you've got a car and time to turn the phones on and go for the day.

Okay I have two small mugs of root beer, will that be everything?

Well, it would be cooks or carhops.

Although when you gain more experience as a carhop then you would come inside and work the fountain and then you were sort of running the show.

Had to coordinate with the kitchen, with the counter, with new orders coming in, then still have their own orders that would come in with only drinks, ice cream, floats.

But the kitchen had a lot going back there.

You know, I mean, dad had a full menu so we're talking chicken dinners and you know all the different kind of sandwiches.

Yeah, I mean it was a big operation in that little tiny kitchen.

Little teeny tiny kitchen.

Yep.

Big operation, everything cooked to order, nothing sitting around.

Generally it was people's first job.

I'm Joel Heinrich.

I'm Marianne Ritchie.

I'm Rebecca Ward.

I worked at the Corral Drive-In in the 70's and my children had the opportunity to work there in the 90's.

I started after my sophomore year in high school and worked there for four summers.

And I started out as a carhop.

My very first year was a carhop but after that I was a fountain girl for the last three.

It was my first job other than babysitting when I was younger.

What I enjoyed is that I worked with all the Holmquist kids.

They were in my generation.

It was great and I felt like Fred and Charlotte were excellent employers.

They expected a lot but they valued hard work and when they saw that you were a good worker they gave you responsibility and trusted you.

And we had fun too, it was fun.

But I appreciated that and I was really thankful when my children were able to work there, that the Corral was still there and they could work for Fred and Charlotte.

I was a fry cook.

I pretty much made burgers the whole time.

Yeah there was standard practice, like, yeah always you wait till they're bloody to flip them and you always need to press out the grease so they don't run all over the hands and add seasoning.

Toast the buns while you're grilling the burgers.

When I got there Fred would have already been up for hours, you know, cleaning and prepping everything and I would pretty much stick with grilling burgers the entire time.

Certainly sometimes you help out other places, there's plenty of times I filled some root beers or answered the phones.

Very small space and a lot of, you know, well the fryers, the grill.

There was a lot of heat generating devices.

As a carhop we would take the orders that were ready on the counter and walk down the drive and deliver them to the cars.

On the post there was a place to put the tray and some people liked to have the tray hooked onto their window, so we would do that and then we would collect the money.

We liked being busy.

It was a lot of fun.

There's definitely a pace to keep up when it was steady.

There was a door going out and there was a door coming in so you did not collide.

So you got your order and you went out one door, delivered it, and came back in the other.

I'm thankful that we didn't have to go on roller skates because we had a very steep, I wouldn't have I still wouldn't have managed roller skates, even on a flat surface.

The young women working the drive, I mean, you were making change and you had to count it out in your head.

You couldn't be a carhop if you couldn't do change.

What was the worst thing that would happen out in the drive and it was probably when someone would run over a mustard container, splat.

And it would just go everywhere.

And mustard was horrible to get up.

It was just, you know.

And then it was hot out and you take a pail of hot water out several times, right, in order to even get it close to getting up.

I don't know, I always thought the food was really good, too.

Like I mean it was fast food but it was.

It was all made to order.

And it was made to order, so it was fresh, but it was also like the ingredients we used, you know, like you compare the buns we used to like a McDonald's bun or something like that.

It was better food I think, personally.

Whether it was just the standards of cleanliness.

The expectation for workers, you know, all of it.

Like we couldn't send out a bun that was toasted a little too much or, you know, we couldn't send out wilted lettuce that type of thing, you know, I'd get in trouble.

Like, you know, why are you putting this on there, you know.

Like, you know, it had to look right, it had to be good, that type of thing.

They went beyond just you're my employe and I need you to do a job.

I think they really cared about your future and what you were doing.

I think Fred was an educator, they both when I think of how they raised their children to work and just the values they have.

I felt like Fred and Charlotte felt that way about the staff, the people that they hired.

Growing up working in a business with your parents just gives you a different perspective on them as human beings.

You see them in a different way than just being your parents, you understand them in a different way.

So I think it was very valuable in that way, as well, and I think it just made us incredibly close as a family.

Yes.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Mom was the outgoing, front of the house person.

You know said to her girls, called them her girls, the carhops.

Dad could hide in the kitchen and just be in the back and doing his thing back there.

And everything he did to keep the old machinery running.

I mean the place couldn't have continued to operate without him.

We still had the original 1930 root beer pump system, which he kept going.

They were a dynamic duo.

Pretty good movement with the wrist there, John.

Oh yeah, like a bicycle, once you do it you never forget I guess.

That's right.

We did the Holmquist shift in celebration of the 40th and final year of the Corral Drive-In in August of 1997 where all five Holmquist children and Mom and Dad worked a shift.

We had regular customers out on the lot but also that day the '97 crew showed up and Marianne showed up with several family members, as well.

And we actually put Marianne to work a little bit.

Yes, we did.

She got her little hat on and apron and she took the order out to the kids and it was really.

It was really a fun day and just, again, so much laughter that day and so much laughter again watching it.

My brother John got back in the kitchen and he had a certain style about him and right back at it and cleaning and I was harassing my older sister Barb who was working fountain that day and Sandy and Allison were on the drive.

All right let's go.

Get these legs down to 20.

But it was really mom that did push our dad to finally say it's time.

Yep, yep, I'm not going to do this another year Fred.

It closed Labor Day Monday of 1997.

The pride came from ownership, that it was a family business, that it was clean and the food that they put out was really, really good.

As was the root beer.

As was the root beer.

Yep, nobody could make root beer like Dad.

Not wanting to sound sappy, but that is the American dream, right.

In a way.

Having your own business and being your own boss and that type of thing.

So kudos to those that are still operating out there in Minnesota and elsewhere.

The almighty dollar isn't the biggest thing.

Hello.

Hi.

What can I get for you?

Um Walleye basket is that really good?

A lot of people order that.

Yep.

Okay, I'm going to have that.

Okay, perfect.

Is that all?

That's it.

For here or to go?

To go.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

Yep.

I'm Bill Lund, owner of Earl's Drive-In in Roseau, Minnesota.

It was built back in the 50's I know.

The original owner owned it for 22 years and then the next owners owned it I believe for 11 and then my cousin, with her husband, owned it for 22 years and I've owned it for 2 months, so just getting started.

But it's burgers, french fries, waffle fries, just about every side you can think of.

Hello.

I'll just get a strawberry shake.

Like any business you need great help or you're not going to survive and that's what this place has survived on, just all great workers.

I'm Julia Braaten.

I usually work inside, but I started here as a carhop five summers ago.

So the carhop basically goes out to people's cars, takes their orders, writes it on the slip, brings it back to the window and then inside they cook it all up.

And then the carhop delivers it to their vehicle, and if people want they can eat it here, or they can take it to go.

Thank you so much.

Have a nice day.

Inside, well, there's like four main jobs but we have like the fryer, the wrapper who like establishes like everything and then the window who does the ice cream and the money.

At Earl's I started out as a carhop where I would waitress our customers and deliver their food, take their orders.

Now that I've been here for a few years I've moved inside where I'm now the window person.

So I manage the money and I make the ice cream treats and other drinks that people order here.

Well, there's always those moments where you like accidentally drop a cone on them, or like pop, which is super embarrassing.

But one time I was super busy and I walked up to a car, and like sometimes people don't like catch you, so you're kind of like waving at them, like subtly trying to get their attention, and then all of a sudden I looked and I saw these two people making out and I literally ran back to the window and I told my co-workers, I was like, you guys I can never go back to that car again.

I don't want to go.

But it definitely felt embarrassing for me at that time.

I've dropped a tray into someone's car before.

I fell walking to a car before.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Have a good day.

I feel like a lot of the customers really love it cuz they're not used to it or like seeing it, like it's kind of a one of a kind of deal and, like, I think a lot of people love, like, the ability to like sit in their car, eat their food, listen to music, stuff like that.

Hi.

Yeah, I think it's just neat.

I mean the carhops, obviously there's hardly any places left that you just pull in, few drive-ins around, but I think that's the big thing here.

It's just neat.

You come out and get service from the girls and they run the order back, and as quick as we can get it out.

We got five picnic tables out here, you know.

In midsummer, on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, often times they're full at all times.

And like nothing better than some, like, home cooking.

Like small town, you got to love it.

It's Dairyland.

Yeah, Fergus Falls, it's the oldest restaurant in town.

So I'm Pat Connelly, I'm the co-owner with my wife, Jean.

I've been here since 1982, so this is my 41st year of being here.

I was 14 when I got my start, so it's been 42 years of being in the food side of things.

Front, please!

Dairyland was built in 1955.

It was rectangle in shape, didn't have the roof like we have now.

The original owner his name was Bert Skogmo.

After Bert it would have been the Nystroms and the Belgaards, and then the Wilhelms and then my brother Chuck.

So there were four people in between Bert and my wife and I. Bert ran it for the first 13 years, give or take a year, where he went through all the heavy lifting changing it from the rectangle building that you saw back in the 50's to adding the carhop, adding the patio, sit down area, and so on and just seeing that grow.

He was here when he saw the interstate come start to bypass Fergus.

He saw the, kind of I'd call it the golden years, when it was really busy and growing to oh my gosh the interstate is having traffic right past us and those people aren't coming from Pelican Rapids like they used to.

The building's evolved, which is kind of cool, it just changes with time.

There's two wives tales that go with how the store came about.

The one I heard as a kid from Bert was that it's patterned after the Candy Land game from 1940's.

If you look at the old Candy Land games, you're going to see little remnants in that picture that says, you know what, if you take two candy canes together and form them, that's the archway of our doorway.

And if you look at the castle on the top, on the upper right hand corner of the board game, if you look at that castle and look at where the windows placed on the front of the building, it's placed on the front of our building, too.

Then you throw in the pink, white and red that the original color was for the addition, for that remodel pink, white and red, that's what Candy Land was.

All right.

Mushroom and Swiss with fry and a cheeseburger.

Well, the original menu back in the 50's, you could have an egg salad sandwich, you could have a tuna salad sandwich, so kind of some lunchtime, you know, I call them lunch lady sandwiches.

Then we also had hamburgers.

That hamburger, french fry and a milkshake back in '55 was a buck and a quarter.

Ice cream cones were vanilla and you could dip them in chocolate or butterscotch or cherry, but you didn't have the uniqueness of having chocolate ice cream or a twist cone.

It was, that came later, we didn't get that until the 80's.

One thing that's really kind of fun we talk about is how times have changed and how Dairyland tried to be ahead of the curve so to speak.

You go from having the old service, originally you just walked up to the front window like a Tastee Freez, you'd have to place the order from outside.

As that changed then we had the carhop service where the waitress came out to you, took your order on a notepad and then as times changed more and technology changed it's shifted over to an electronic system where you press the button outside, like a walkie talkie, you talk inside.

Someone outside would press a button, there would be a button like this on here.

They'd press it, this would light up, and it'd go ding- ding-ding-ding-ding.

So then like that it'd be a red or I'm sorry a yellow number five.

Welcome to Dairyland, how may I help you.

And then they'd read their order, but it would sound like you're Charlie Brown's parents because you can't hear too well.

I'll have a hamburger, cheeseburger, medium french fry, and he'd say your uncle's from where?

No- no-no so then you talk to them back and forth, read the order back to them.

In the meantime, as that's happening, car number 7, 9, and 10 might be beeping in and if you weren't paying attention.

This is on standby, but if you flip that up like that, now I'm talking to cars 5, 9 and 10 at the same time.

So you'd say welcome to Dairyland, how may I help you and then you'd have three cars blasting back at you.

So trying to coordinate that with 15-year-old teenage girls at the time was always kind of challenge.

As the world changed and the way we do business through the carhop became less simple, we had to make ways to say okay, we still have to make sure we keep it fun and keep it friendly which brought in the drive-thru.

When we switched first to the drive-thru we kept the speaker button that you would use from the carhop when you'd press.

So when you'd come up to the menu board, you'd look at the menu, take a peek at what's on the thing and you'd sit and wait.

You'd wait and you'd wonder why is that person not inside taking or inside not taking my order and then you'd see a thing that said press the button.

So our very first drive-thru menu board utilized our carport menu system and then we transitioned into what you see today.

Just slowly crawl, walk, run has been the attitude.

You know, when you make change, don't do it overnight.

Just first you crawl, then you walk, then you run.

When the store has been added on to over the years, you can always look kind of close and you'll see that okay, there's a line that says this was the 1955 addition, this was the 1981 addition, the 1985 addition.

You can see telltale signs of that's part of the history.

The fun part here, as you look at, if you look close you're going to see some wood cut out or actually some wood fill in, this was the original window that looked into our kitchen.

So that when Bert was cooking his food and the carhop was outside, he could just wrap on the window, open up the window, and hand out the food.

And transition like that.

The very first inside seating came in 1962 when they put the addition on.

And that seating was kind of cool.

It was room for 12 one-armed school desks.

In 1991 we made the true inside seating.

How that evolved, as people started getting central air in their homes, central air in their cars, now let's have central air in our restaurants as well.

And I think you saw that change probably in the 70's.

The booths that you see when you come in the restaurant right now were the ones that were built when we did the addition.

And the gentleman who made those booths is still alive and lives in Fergus.

So McDougall Woodworks is his name.

Jay came in two weeks ago and he sits at the table at the booth and he smiles as I'm talking to him and his hands on the table like this.

I go what are you doing Jay, and he laughs.

He says I told your brother Charlie that if these tables make it for 15 years, things will be good.

That was in 1991.

In that whole transition what we found is that what was successful in 1955 is still what drives Dairyland today.

Keep it fun.

Keep it simple.

Keep it friendly.

When you're a kid, you know, just having a big pop and a cheeseburger with fries and you're eating right there in the car and the whole experience with the carhop bringing the food to the car, it was just a novel idea, something different and more fun than going inside to a sit-down restaurant.

Perfect.

So the deluxe cheeseburger combo with everything, fries and a diet pepsi.

Your total is 15.56, please pull ahead.

Red please.

Number two.

What do you got going on here for me?

For the last five, six years my mom has been saying, Patrick you need to write a book about the history of the store.

I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get around to it.

But the reason I decided now is the time, I'm the only living owner who has a understanding of the history going back to when it was built.

Now I wasn't alive back in '55 but I had the chance of knowing Bert Scogma who was the original owner.

So he had shared some stories, mainly with my brother Chuck, who had shared them with me.

That's what I wanted to make sure that we conveyed in the book, that through all of that, through the changes, seeing the interstate come, seeing the phone disappear and how that's changed, seeing the carhop disappear, seeing all these things that might have been dear to us as kids now they're not there and how does that...

But at the same time, even though they're not there, that little red building is still there.

You know will the day come where you, what are we faced with?

Me at 56 years old and realizing that the gap between me and the youngest employee is now 42 years.

When I started working here the gap between me as the youngest person in the store and my brother being the oldest in the store was 10 years.

So that's a big difference to have to kind of to bridge that gap.

We have to make sure that we can still keep it enjoyable.

Here you go, Emma, food and tickies, it's all there.

From my point of view, anyway, I think it kind of reflects back on an easier, simpler time where everything wasn't quite so complicated and fastpaced and you had a chance to probably enjoy more of the experiences than what we do now.

Even though it's always faster paced and we always want bigger, we want better, and I talk about it in the book.

Sometimes we just want more, more, and more, and then we come back to Fergus and the Dairyland is still here and I can get my cheese curds, I can get my popcorn chicken, and I can get a smile and a wave from Pat.

So you go from that more and more, more and more, more to stop.

Kids thought it was cool.

I remember going there and little kids wanting to push the button, you know, and be the one who talked.

High-tech, those microphones were pretty impressive.

So it was a new experience for folks and a way to get out and do something as a family.

Just like going on a picnic but you don't have to make the food.

You know when you figure $2 for a full order for a family of four, you know, was reasonable.

It wasn't something but it was also unique to, you know, call in your order on a phone.

I think they loved pulling up in their cars and, you know, having it come out on a tray and you're eating in the car, I mean it was just fun.

You know the idea that people are going to drive in and just sit and take a leisurely evening in the drive-in is, I'm sorry to say, I don't think there's a whole lot of that anymore.

People seem to be very busy and they're sort of tied to their schedules and they got to get through.

Unfortunately we need to learn how to slow down and maybe enjoy a little bit more.

Lot is empty.

Yeah and we're slowed down, it's time to say good night.

An hour early, wow.

How about that?

[Music] [Music] Production costs for this program have been made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by vote of the people, November 4th, 2008.