Life is but a patchwork of squares on our individual quilt. Each square holding a piece of history that is unique to you. Some of those squares are happy memories and some are sorrowful. All are unique in their own special way.
Last week a friend of mine, a town cryer of sorts, posted on social media about a for sale sign at a local eatery. Some commented that the sign was about the Christmas tree business that usually sets up shop in the parking lot. Unfortunately, not long after the rumors made their way around, it was confirmed. Fat Boy, the iconic Brunswick drive-in, was for sale.
When I think about those squares on my quilt Fat Boy plays a great part. Imagine one of those squares being the summer of 1982. That year my parents bought a Dodge passenger van. You know the type. It was a rectangular box on wheels. Two-toned gray, it resembled something that had been built by the shipbuilders at the Yard.
This van was a transformer. The seats in the back would transform and there was a hidden table where my sisters and I could sit and eat and play. And it was this van which would take us to visit Fat Boy. This van was our transport to a wondrous place where frappes, whoperburgers and onion rings reigned supreme. Mmmm…onion rings.
Long before I could remember going to a drive through, there was Fat Boy. Car hops came to get your order. They brought you your food. You never had to get out of the car. For a family with four kids under eight years old this was amazing.
Admittedly, the food was not the best that Brunswick had to offer, but the offerings were reliable. That same burger, figuratively, with all its tastes and characteristics, was the same one you could have eaten in 1972 and it would be the same one you had in 1992 or 2012. Nowhere else could you find a burger with that flavor that was delivered to you in a wax paper package.
The frappes tasted the same. Whether you wanted chocolate or vanilla, mocha or banana the frappe was the same over the decades. The onion rings, the real star of the show, had the same flaky, crunchy feel. There were like nothing else in the area. Fat Boy was Brunswick and Brunswick was home.
People from near and far knew of this one of kind place. Aided greatly by decades of Navy personnel and their families enjoying the fare, Fat Boy was well known. When someone heard that you were from Brunswick, usually a comment followed about having eaten at Fat Boy. It was, and still remains, an institution.
It is sad that institutions come and go. It has always happened. We get to know something, we enjoy it. We are comfortable, and we don’t want to see them go. Those who remember the Chuck Wagon know what I am talking about. We can only hope that the next owners of the Fat Boy location will honor the history, and more importantly the menu, as they work to make the drive-in their own.
And now, if the price is right, all of this may come to an end. The writer Thomas Wolfe wrote a book titled, “You can’t go home again”. I do not know if that is entirely true, however coming home without Fat Boy may not feel the same ever again.
Jonathan Crimmins can be reached at j_crimmins@hotmail.com