07 All About Carhops

Carhops Roxy Payton-Newland, left, and Joyce (Crow) Schermerhorn, circa 1958, in the carhop stall inside the Cross Roads. The mirrored machine on the wall behind them is a cigarette machine. Carhops would buy cigarettes as requested by customers. Sometimes four to five carhops would be working out of the carhop stall on Saturday nights in the summer.

What's A Carhop, Pop? -- A True Story

Recently I was telling a friend in his mid-30s -- more than young enough to be my son -- about the teenage culture of the '50s when he interrupted to ask, "What’s a carhop?"
I thought he was joking, but he was quite serious.
"What do you think a carhop is," I replied.
"I don’t know," he said. "Someone who jumps on the hoods of cars as a prank?"
I explained that a carhop was a waitress who brought food to one's car at drive-in restaurants.
He followed up with another question: "Why did people eat in their cars when they could go inside the restaurant?"
I didn’t have a logical explanation.
Maybe it was because those of us who grew up in the '50s were born during the Great Depression, when few families could afford cars, and we spent our early childhood during World War II, when even families who could afford cars were limited in their use because of gas rationing.
My best guess is that our cars doubled as peripatetic homes away from home that allowed teens for the first time in history to roam about freely.
Another generation down the line, and senior citizens of tomorrow will have to define for their children the meaning of some other words we grew up with and still take for granted –- such as mimeograph machine, fountain pen and typewriter, to name but a few.
One wonders how many young people today know what Packard, Studebaker, Willy’s, Kaiser, DeSoto, Nash and Hudson stood for.
-- Len Klempnauer, Capitola, Calif.

Memories of a Cross Roads Carhop

(The commentary below was written by Roxy (Payton) Newland of Watsonville, Calif., Santa Cruz High Class of '57 and a carhop for five years at the Cross Roads.)
I am writing this in hopes that the Cross Roads Drive-in building can be saved. I was a carhop at the Cross Roads for five years. It was the hangout for the teens and young adults to visit and have a vanilla or cherry Coke. Those were the days of root beer floats and thick malts and milk shakes.
We had trays that we put on the windows of the cars and also trays to put inside vehicles when we served a larger meal, such as dinners with soup, salad, drink and dessert. We even had trays that attached to the steering wheel. It made a pretty heavy load at times.
We made good tips as carhops. We also got to visit more with the kids that came in. We knew when people were finished eating and wanted to leave because they would turn their car lights on.
During the summer we had the Suntan Special passenger train come to town on Sundays. People came from all over the San Francisco Bay Area to the beach to get a tan or go to the Boardwalk. At the end of the day we really got busy trying to feed everyone so they wouldn't miss the train to go home.
We met new friends and saw old friends at the Cross Roads. We would cruise the drag (Pacific Avenue) down to Spivey's Five Spot Drive-in and back down along the beach. The guys would show off their cars and check out the girls.
I met my husband at the Pronto Pup Drive-in in Watsonville. He was in the same Watsonville High class as Ron Ross, who married Marcia Klempnauer, daughter of the Cross Road owners, who worked as a waitress and occasionally as a carhop while attending school. Ron and Marcia, SCHS of 1956, may have met at the Cross Roads; the four of us have all been married for 43 years.
Kids would always come in to the Cross Roads after football games or the movies or dances. Even the out-of-towners knew it was the "in" spot to be seen. It was a fun place for all of us kids.
In the five years that I worked there, I never saw a fight. We knew all the police officers as they came in to have coffee and talk. Doug James was a favorite. He later was elected Sheriff of Santa Cruz County, and I'm sure some people remember him well.
We lost a lot of the character of Santa Cruz from the earthquake in 1989 due to the loss of the older buildings. I hope that the City Of Santa Cruz will leave the Cross Roads as a reminder museum for the children of tomorrow -- the innocent years of the Fifties.
I don't know if any of the City Council or Depot Park committee members are old enough to remember the '50s or if they even lived in Santa Cruz County in the '50s. But I think not. If they were old enough and did live here then, maybe they wouldn't be so all fired up to tear down a building that still means so much to so many of the rest of us.
I do hope the council will reconsider its plan to demolish the Cross Roads. Maybe they will take the time to think of a place that was special to them when they were teens. They should try to project being age 60 to 70 and have a group of younger people tearing down the favorite place of their youth simply because it's old and seems to no longer have a purpose. Is there a metaphor there?

A Missouri Carhop's Story

In the early 1940s, a cultural phenomenon was taking shape in Kansas City. It was the crossroads of hamburgers, heavy cars and curbside service at places such as Mugs Up, Sydney's and Winsteads.
"I got acquainted with so many people," said Flo Hayes, who worked as a Winstead's carhop from 1941 to 1967. "I learned their cars, their kids, their dogs. And before long, they changed cars, the kids grew up. I had a lot of good kids that would come in. They used to borrow money from me even to buy hamburgers. A couple of days later, they’d come back and pay me back.
"It was fun; it was just a fun job. I loved every minute of it."
Maybe not every minute.
"The first time I waited on the curb, I took a soda out on a tray, put that tray on and that soda flew over into this man's lap, and the vanilla ice cream went right into his pocket," she said. "And I used to wait on him after that, and he'd kid me and say, 'I'm not going to have a soda, I'm just going to have a Coke.' It's funny now, but it wasn't at the time."
Hayes soon mastered the art of serving sodas and continued taking orders curbside for 31 years.
"When I waited on them for so long a time, I knew what they wanted," Hayes said.
"Lot of times people would drive in, and I'd have their order ready by the time they got in their stall.
"Ten-cent tips, that was a big tip. And do you know what our pay was? A dollar a day, $5.92 a week."
Hamburgers and frosties for you and your date would set you back 40 cents in 1941. But the sights and the sounds were priceless. These were the places to be and be seen after high school ballgames and movie dates.
In those days, drive-ins were places to eat fast food slowly, to linger in the company of friends.
"I don’t know why they went to this drive-through stuff," Hayes said. "I don't like it. I never did. I still don't. You know, when I get in this line sometime, I think, 'Golly, if I could get out on the curb and wait on those people, I could wait on them a lot faster than they’re going through this line'."
The preceding was published by Kansas City Business, a publication for the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, in August 2001. It can be found at: Kansas City Carhop

An Indiana Carhop's Story

Being a car hop at Schang's Drive-In in the 1950s was a perfect job for me and many other teenaged girls. We were actually paid to see all our friends! Of course, there was a bit of work that had to be done, but it only felt like work in cold or rainy weather when not many customers pulled into the gravel lot. Then the time passed exceedingly slow, the tips were few, and the replays of the limited stack of 45 records over the loudspeaker became a reminder of how long the shift was.
Whenever I hear songs like The Wayward Wind by Gogi Grant, It's All in the Game by Tommy Edwards or Til I Kissed You by the Everly Brothers, I remember the many wonderful times I had at Schang's.
After movies, football games, dances and the Teen Canteen, teens lucky enough to have the family car would make at least one circuit of the drive-ins to see and be seen. Few teens had cars of their own, and even a station wagon was better than none. Cars customized by their teen drivers were widely admired, so some guys cruised simply to show off the latest addition to their cars. Holly Glass Pack mufflers were in style, and those who had them made sure everyone else heard their unique rumble.
I worked at Schang's in the seasons of 1955, 1956 and 1957. The season began about April 1 and ended Sept. 30. I don't recall the exact hours but on weekends we didn't close until 1 a.m., much later than my curfew. Like many carhops, I was too young to drive so my parents took me to work and picked me up. For day shifts I sometimes walked the mile from town to work.
My supervisor was usually Mrs. Schang or her daughter, Joan, who was about four years older than I...
Expectations were made clear at hiring, and it was rare for someone to be a no-show at the scheduled time or not do their share of the work. The carhops were all girls but the inside help included some guys. We didn't have uniforms, and the carhops usually wore blouses or sweaters with skirts and bouffant crinolines. I think my starting pay was 20 cents an hour plus tips, and I worked 20 hours or so a week...
When I first began working at Schang's, hamburgers were cooked on a traditional restaurant grill, but it wasn't long until a marvelous new automatic broiler was installed. A hamburger patty and a bun were put on a conveyor at one end of the machine, and they emerged on the other side fully cooked and ready for condiments. Even a carhop could fry hamburgers with this machine! All employees were fascinated by this modern marvel and spent quite a bit of time watching raw hamburgers disappear inside and emerge, magically, ready-to-eat.
Menus were printed on white posterboard and had a number painted on the back. A hamburger was $.25, french fries $.20, and a Coke $.10. For just over a dollar, a guy could take his favorite gal out to eat. A deep-fried chicken dinner with salad, fries, roll and beverage was only $1.50. Sauerkraut-topped hot dogs called "Dutch Dogs" were a favorite of many customers.
Carhops placed the card under a car's windshield wiper on the driver's side so that the menu could be read by people inside the car and the number could be seen by the carhop outside. The carhop wrote the number on the order so that when it was ready she knew which car to take it to.
As the inside help readied an order, they put the food on a 10 x 14-inch aluminum tray at a pass-through window between the kitchen and the outside. In those days drinks were served in glass mugs and glasses. Sandwiches and fries were nestled in plastic oval baskets lined with sheets of waxed paper. After paying for the order, the carhop carried the tray of food to the car with the matching number.
Fastening the tray to the car was somewhat tricky: Two padded clips at one long edge of the tray were placed over the partially opened driver's window and the arm that hung below the tray top was pushed in against the side of the car. If not positioned exactly right, the tray with all its contents would unexpectedly fall off the car. Most carhops had a few trays fall before they mastered the technique.
There was always a bit of a rush at nine o'clock at night. Partly because that's when the movie let out and partly because people seem to get the munchies about that time. Even on a slow night, you could be sure of a few customers at 9 p.m.
Working and growing up in Columbia City in the 1950s was a wonderful time of innocence and shelter from the world at large, although I didn't realize it then. A telling example occurred when a black family drove in one summer afternoon. There were no blacks living or working in Columbia City, and my only exposure to non-whites had been while shopping in Fort Wayne.
I walked to the car and as usual asked, "May I take your order please?" The man behind the wheel asked if they could be served. I answered, "Sure, what would you like?" He must have sensed that I didn't understand his real question because he repeated the question in plainer language, "Can people like us eat here?" Then I understood that he was asking whether we served Negroes, as they were called then, and without a second thought I replied, "Of course. What would you like?"
It wasn't until years later that I fully understood the incident. At the time I was so sheltered that I didn't realize there were restaurants, some even in Columbia City, which refused to serve Negroes. Fortunately for this black family and for me, Mr. and Mrs. Schang's drive-in wasn't one of them.
The preceding is part of an article in the September 1999 edition of The Bulletin, a publication of the Whitley County Historical Society, in Columbia City, Ind. It can be found at: Columbia City Carhop

Origin of the Word 'Carhop'

The word "carhop" dates back to the early 1920s when servers at Pig Stand in Fort Worth, Tex., would "hop" onto an automobile’s running board to deliver food. Running boards have long since disappeared but America's persistent preoccupation with cars and quick eats have given the drive-in restaurant enduring appeal, according to Sandra Mizumoto Posey, who holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from UCLA. To read about Ms. Mizumoto Posey's visit to a drive-in in Florida, go to: Summer Carhop

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