A Very OK Podcast
Episode 59: “Historic Restaurants on Route 66”
June 16, 2025
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s great to be with you today.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Thank you. Trait. It is good to be in today, especially talking about Route 66, because literally this morning I was on Route 66 going to Weatherford, work on a museum exhibit at 8 o’clock, came back, and ate a hamburger on Route 66.
Thompson: Well, there’s nothing better than stopping at a great restaurant on Route 66, and as you did, having a hamburger or maybe a chicken-fried steak or maybe some roast beef, I think the rule is you’re not allowed to eat anything healthy when you’re traveling Route 66, and the more gravy, the better, I suspect.
Blackburn: And my stop today, I didn’t leave Weatherford until right at one. So, about 1:30, and I stopped at the Cherokee Trading Post there on the highway. I think it’s 271 that goes north to Geary, into Watonga, and went in and looked at everything. I thought, I think a hamburger is what I need today. I hadn’t had beef. So, huge hamburger. They call it a Cherokee burger there and with onion rings.
Thompson: Oh, yeah.
Blackburn: And they were fresh made. They were so good. And I looked at it and said maybe I can eat half of this. And most of it was gone by the time I left. And I’m not a big guy, but it was really good.
Thompson: Well, I’ll tell you, when you can find homemade onion rings, I have to order those because there’s not a lot of places that make onion rings in the restaurant. Usually they’re frozen out of a bag, and they fry them. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll eat. You put a pile of onion rings in front of me, and I’ll eat them. But the ones that are handmade are just—oh, I love them.
Blackburn: And it’s a little bit of a spice in them. I’d never quite—this flavor, it was unique between the sweetness of the onion and the spice that was in it, with the big crust, you know, it was. You could tell it was hand-dipped.
Thompson: Okay, Bob, you’re going to do this podcast by yourself. I’m going to try to go get some onion rings.
Blackburn: What’s your favorite hamburger in town?
Thompson: Well, I love hamburgers, and we’ll talk about onion burgers here in a little bit because there’s some great places to get onion burgers. But my favorite hamburger is on May Avenue here in Oklahoma City, and it’s Patty Wagon. And that restaurant is actually on one of the alignments of Route 66. I don’t know what they do there. I know this—their buns are incredible.
Blackburn: They make them there.
Thompson: They make them there. But, and everything is fresh and made to order. Their fries are hand-cut in the restaurant, and so it’s not fries out of a bag, but I love that place. It’s probably good that I don’t go there as often as I would like to go there.
Blackburn: Well, and people are going to be angry if they go because you wait in line. Yeah, there is a line there. You think, well, I got 2 o’clock. There’s a line. You go there at 11 o’clock. There’s a line. It’s a popular place.
Thompson: And that’s good because it’s a good locally-owned establishment. And of course, I don’t want to take away from all the other. Oklahoma City has a lot of great burger places. Edmond, where I live, has great burger places too. But that that just happens to be one of my favorites here in the city for sure. Well, it’s good that we’re talking about food, because what we’re talking about in this episode are historic restaurants along Route 66. And, you know, Route 66 was formed in 1926. And as people are making their way across the state and across the country, one of the things that you have to do is you have to eat. Now, it wouldn’t be uncommon, back in those days, for people to actually pack lunches and stop along the side of the road and to eat, kind of picnic style, as they’re traveling along Route 66. But these restaurants start to spring up, particularly in the early 1930s, that start to cater to these travelers.
Blackburn: Well, the big picture, if I might do a broad picture, and then we’ll back up and a couple of snapshots through the big picture. But the first interstate traveling system was actually by railroad. And at that time, you had the Harvey Houses that would have been at the big depot. So you’d had one at Waynoka, where the TAT airline would stop and pick up passengers to take you on this transcontinental ride, or there’s a great old restaurant in Atoka and one in Idabel, I believe. But anyway, there are several places around the town where you can find those old, that are associated with hotels and railroad travel. Well, as people travel to towns like Oklahoma City and Tulsa and Amarillo even, and Albuquerque, typically they were going to find restaurants associated with hotels. So if you’re going through Claremore, you could eat in the in the little cafe that’s inside the Will Rogers Hotel. When you get to Oklahoma City, you’d eat inside the the restaurants in the hotel. So, that was where it started. Then you had your little mom and pop shops, the tiny hamburger joints, the chili bars that, you know, catered to a local community, whether for oilfield workers coming in to Shawnee or it’s people in the lead and zinc mines wanting to eat in Miami, or farmers and ranchers out in western Oklahoma. So you’d have your mom and pop that would cater to the locals.
But here comes a stream of new customers down Route 66, and entrepreneurs respond to it. And so, you get the rise of some of these bigger restaurants. But by the 1940s, you start seeing these little diners. And the exhibit I’m preparing in Weatherford at the Heartland of America Museum there on the south side of the highway, is there were two Porter House Diners where you could buy a stainless steel structure that was portable from the manufacturing plants in Wichita that had been making airplanes, and they knew how to work with aluminum and steel and structures. So, you could get a little diner there, haul it into town, move it if you didn’t have the right location. You know, when I went to college in in Weatherford in the 1969 and ’70, the Porter House on the west side of town was still open, and we would go there at night. It was open 24 hours a day. So you start getting diners, you start getting chains like Sonic. Sonic takes advantage of that in the 1950s and ’60s. Starts in Shawnee 1953, but their first one on Route 66 is on Northwest 39th Street in Oklahoma City, but opened before 1958 as a Top Hat. Later changed to a Sonic. So, you start getting the restaurant chains that come in and take advantage, Howard Johnsons. There’s another one would, open their chain of restaurants on the turnpike and, you know, the midway.
Originally in 1953, when Turner Turnpike starts, Howard Johnson was at the midpoint. You could go in and get multiple flavors of ice cream or food. But really, I think the heart of Route 66 food comes down to the local businesspeople who found a unique menu, a unique way to put it in a building that catered to the traveling public. And some of those have survived today. And that’s part of this nostalgic love of Route 66, getting off the interstates, getting away from the big chains that are owned in Atlanta and Chicago and Los Angeles, and find that local flavor in food, as well as buildings and experiences that you can get on Route 66.
Thompson: Yeah. I wanted to do a little excerpt here because we talked about The Grapes of Wrath in one of our previous podcasts. And in that book, Steinbeck, as he’s telling the story of the Joads, there will be these interludes where the chapters will talk about different experiences along Route 66. And in chapter 15, he talks about the diners and the hamburger stands. Now, a little excerpt here. He says, “Along 66, the hamburger stands, Al & Susy’s Place, Carl’s Lunch, Joe and Minnie, Will’s Eats. Board-and-bat shacks. Two gasoline pumps in front, a screen door, a long bar, stools, and a foot rail. Near the door, three slot machines showing through the glass the wealth of nickels three bars will bring. And beside them, the nickel phonograph with records piled up like pies, ready to swing out to the turntable and play dance music.” Skipping on— “the walls are decorated with posters, bathing girls, blondes with...slender hips and waxen faces, in in white bathing suits, and holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and smiling, see what you get with a Coca-Cola. Long bars, salt and pepper, mustard pots, paper napkins. Beer taps behind the counter, and then in the back, the coffee urns, shiny and steaming, with glass gauges showing the coffee level. And pies in wire cages and oranges and pyramids of four. And little piles of Post Toasties, corn flakes, stacked up in designs.” I mean, does that?
Blackburn: Steinbeck is an artist. He just paints with words.
Thompson: It just paints a picture. You can almost feel what it feels to walk in one of those place and see it in your mind’s eye, and you can smell the place.
Blackburn: And a shared memory. The beauty of art that affects so many people when they can tap into that shared memory, and we’ve all had those same experiences. He just put it in into poetry that we can all feel and experience.
Thompson: Yeah. So that’s chapter 15 of The Grapes of Wrath, which we spoke about a couple of episodes ago. But there were these great places along Route 66. And since we talked, we’re talking about burger joints. I think we should start out with a couple of them. So let’s talk about, there’s one at one side of the state and one at the other side of the state. Waylan’s Ku-Ku Burger in Miami and Johnnie’s Grill in El Reno. Have you eaten at either one of those, Bob?
Blackburn: Both of them.
Thompson: Okay. So Waylan’s was—first of all, Arthur Bradley, Salina, Kansas, chartered The Ku-Ku Inc. in 1964 and started selling franchises for those drive-ins. They had a giant fiberglass bird that regularly cried “cuckoo,” through the loudspeakers. And Wayland opened his in Miami right there on Main Street in 1965. Hamburgers were $0.15, French fries were $0.15, and milkshakes were $0.20. And even though the Ku-Ku chain collapsed, he purchased his restaurant in 1973, and he continues to operate it today. And I can tell you, I ate there maybe a month ago when I was up in that area of the woods, and the burgers are fantastic. And I did have onion rings, and they were great as well. But he’s still out there doing it right there on Route 66, and it’s a classic American hamburger drive-in.
Blackburn: Yeah. And it’s part of the experience of being on Route 66 and finding those. Those are a little, little hidden gems that you find along that necklace of concrete that is Route 66.
Thompson: Well, I don’t know about you, Bob, and your family vacations over the years, but when our family drives and we’re on a long road trip, we try to find the local joints, and it’s pretty easy now. You can go on Google, and you can search for all the restaurants in your area. You can look at the reviews, and see if people think they’ve had good food or not so good food, but we always try, if we can, to find a local joint, you know, rather than eat at a McDonald’s or Arby’s or whatever it is, let’s find the place that, you know, that kind of speaks to the local fare there. And a lot of times the service is better, the food’s better. You can have a great conversation with the owner usually, and you can discover something new.
Blackburn: Well, I, that happened to me recently. Wasn’t on Route 66, unfortunately, but I was traveling from Wichita Mountains, going over to Palo Duro Canyon to camp out and going through Altus on the way in from the east side of Altus, little Sunshine Diner. Walked in there, and I heard the waitress saying, yeah, we get our beef from a local rancher. So I said, well, I’ll have one of those hamburgers. And it was just one of those tasty burgers, that you just have to have.
Thompson: Yeah. Well, and I’ll tell you, one of my favorite things is, I love a restaurant with a good pie. And you don’t see pies made as often anymore as they used to be. And one of my favorite places to get a good piece of pie is in Claremore at the Hammett House.
Blackburn: The best.
Thompson: And that is not directly on Route 66, but it’s a stone’s throw away from Route 66. And if you guys, you need to go eat these pies because the meringue, it’s got to be six inches high on those pies. And Bill Baird, a long time owner and great promoter of Route 66 Museum, I mean, well, Will Rogers Museum. Unfortunately lost Bill recently, but Bill, that was his pride and joy. And when I was working on the Will Rogers Memorial a lot, I’d be up there on weekends and the days when the Hammett House was closed. I saw Bill, he’d say, you got to come by the store. I’ll open it up and give you a pie or a cake. And that was always a treat. So Debbie liked for me to go to Claremore on those days because she’d get a piece of pie when I’d get home.
Thompson: Oh, I know, he did the same for me. A few years ago, I was up there for a Will Rogers Foundation board meeting, and after the meeting, he said, swing by the restaurant. And this was, you know, I think they were open. It was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We pulled up in the back and he gave me and I think Jack Baker was, he gave us like, two pies a piece to take home with us. It was maybe one of the best days of my life.
Thompson: Don’t tell my wife or kids that, but another one, Johnnie’s Grill in El Reno. And if Oklahoma on Route 66 is famous for anything, it’s onion burgers. And onion burgers were a concoction during the Depression years in the late 1920s and the 1930s to try to make your beef go farther and last longer. They’d essentially take a five-ounce burger patty. They would add half a shredded onion on top, and they would mash it in with the spatula, and it would give the burger more weight and more volume. And what started out as just a trick to try to make the meat go further has turned into a delicacy here in Oklahoma. And Johnnie’s Grill is one of many famous places that do great onion burgers. And Johnnie’s opened in 1946. Johnnie Siler opened up the restaurant, and he perfected those fried onion burger techniques. When he retired in 1967, Otis Bruce took over the operation. Ultimately, snow collapsed the roof of the restaurant in 1906, so, they moved the diner across the street, and in 1995 it was sold to Steve Gallaway, and he continued the restaurant and even expanded it. There was an issue of Food Network magazine that featured Johnnie’s Grill as one of the top 50 burgers in the United States. And now, Bob, I don’t know if you know this or not. Oklahoma has the Oklahoma Onion Burger Trail where you can map out all across the state anywhere that you want to go get a great onion burger. And that was announced just this last May 2026. And if you want to find out more about that, you can go to OKOnionBurgerTrail.com.
Blackburn: Well, and to keep your weight down you need to do it by bicycle.
(laughter)
Thompson: That’s true. That’s true. If you’re going to be eating a lot of those onion burgers, you need to try to do everything you can to keep the calories off. But, so I have not eaten at Johnnie’s before. I’ve eaten at Sid’s in El Reno, which is another great diner that serves onion burgers as well.
Blackburn: And Sid’s is Supreme Court Justice Yvonne Kauger’s favorite place. I was working on an exhibit in Colony for her after I retired, and she said, Bob, let’s leave at a certain time so we can stop at Sid’s. And we went in there, and she knew the cook And hey, that is a good burger too.
Thompson: There’s a restaurant in Vinita that’s no longer around. Of course, Vinita has a couple of great restaurants on Route 66. One of them is Clanton’s, and the other great one is the Hi-Way Cafe, both of which are well worth a visit. But there’s one called the Grand Cafe that was opened in 1912 by Walter and Ella Undergraff in 1916. Walter died in 1922 when he was 46 years old, and Ella continued to run the restaurant. One of the interesting things about Ella is she mastered the art of commercial cooking and was great at making pies. So good, in fact, that she sold her pies to the Frisco Railway for their patrons. And they were also the Greyhound bus station, so they were open 24 hours a day there in Vinita. Ella retired in 1947 and turned the cafe over to her children, and they ran it up until the early 1970s when the restaurant closed. And then that whole block was razed in 1989 to make room for a McDonald’s, of all things. But one of the interesting things about this, and it speaks to the atmosphere of traveling for Route 66 for people that were not white. The way they advertised, and in a few minutes, we’re going to talk with Kathy Anderson about Chicken in the Rough and that chicken dish, which was a dish that you ate with your hands. And they actually advertised chicken that, and I’m going to try to be as delicate about this as I can, but the advertisement said, eat chicken like a Black person, essentially, and you can guess what words they might have used that are words that I won’t say on this podcast. But it was very, very racist. And it tried to advertise that, you know, eating with your hands was essentially like eating like African American people, and I can only imagine what people who saw those advertisements might have felt as they were driving along that road.
Blackburn: Yeah, but while we’re talking about, Vinita. Clanton’s is still open today, and it’s one of the few restaurants that I know of that still cooks their chicken-fried steak the traditional way on a grill and not deep fried.
Thompson: Okay.
Blackburn: When I go to a restaurant, and I am a connoisseur of chicken fry, I say, how do you cook it? They say deep fried. I said, I don’t want it. I don’t care if they hand-breaded. I don’t want it deep fried. I want it grilled, and they still do it that way at Clanton’s.
Thompson: I did not know that. I’ve eaten at Clanton’s a few years ago. It’s been a minute since I’ve been in there, and I want to say the last thing I had there was the chicken-fried chicken, so I wonder if they do that the same way. But moving on. Ike’s Chili in Tulsa is a long time restaurant. In fact, it was opened in 1907 in an alley off of Second Street between Main and Boulder Avenue. You could get your chili with beans, without beans. Or you could get it over spaghetti, which is more of a Cincinnati style of chili. And when customers learned that they could eat as many crackers as they wanted, that helped with chili sales. In fact, the National Biscuit Company, which today we know as Nabisco, that was one of their best accounts was Ike’s Chili in Tulsa. Ike’s was also a favorite of Will Rogers. He loved coming back home and having a bowl of Ike’s chili. He passed away in 1928, but the restaurants are still around. In fact, just in 2014, they moved to a building along 11th Street, which is along the alignment of Route 66, and is still a very popular place for people to eat there in Tulsa. I have never eaten at Ike’s Chili, which I need to rectify that at some point soon. Have you, Bob?
Blackburn: I haven’t.
Thompson: Okay, well we need to add that one to our list. The other one that is a historic restaurant along Route 66 is the Rock Cafe in Stroud. Now, I have eaten at the Rock Cafe. In fact, I’ve eaten there several times. How about you?
Blackburn: I’ve eaten there before the fire and after the fire.
Thompson: Okay, yeah. So we’ll talk about the fire a little bit. But this restaurant was built from 1936 to 1939, and it is a sandstone building with a flat roof. Originally it’s on Highway 7. Of course in 1926, Highway 7 becomes Route 66. The owner of the H&P service station, Roy Rieves, bought the sandstone building, and then he moved to Stroud in the 1920s, and he thought the Rock Cafe would be a good way to get his daughter and son-in-law to move back to town to help him manage it. And in fact, it was. They opened the cafe on August 4, 1939, and it was an instant success. Once again, it was also the Greyhound bus station, so it had a lot of traffic for people coming back, especially in 1942 as the war was going on and soldiers were coming back or they were coming in from on leave. And, unfortunately, it was also a segregated cafe. Black and Indian customers were not allowed in the building. They had to take their food, and they had to eat it outside. In its heyday, it was a very busy building. In 1959, Mamie Mayfield acquired the lease, and she ran it for 24 hours a day until 1983. And then there was a woman named Dawn Welch who got lost in Stroud. And Smalley found the perfect heir to carry on the Rock Cafe’s legacy. Dawn had traveled the world. She had actually worked on a cruise ship before. She was visiting her mother, who was living in Stroud, and, she said, “I was rollerblading down Main Street when this old man in an old truck, Ed Smalley, pulled over and told me that my mom had told him I wanted to buy a grill. He took me to the Rock Cafe and unlocked the doors, and there was all this dusty restaurant equipment.” And she ends up taking over the restaurant. She hires Beverly Thomas to be the general manager there, who still is the manager there today. And in 2000, Michael Wallis brings a group from Pixar to the Rock Cafe as they were scouting out and learning more about Route 66 to make a movie that ultimately becomes the movie Cars, which is released in 2006. And the character Sally is actually based upon Dawn Welch, who owns that cafe.
Blackburn: And Dawn’s personality is very much like the character in Cars, because when the Rock Cafe burned to the ground, and when she tells the story, the tears come to her eyes still, but she made the tough decision to stick with it. She called Melvena Heisch on our staff here at the Historical Society, started talking about what would be subject to the Secretary of Interior standards to do it the right way to put it back together in a historic adaptive reuse, and invested and built it right back. And today you can still get a variety of foods there. I actually—she had a former spouse who was German, and I like the German food there. So when I go, I get that’s on of my German restaurants that I go to on Route 66, but anything you get there is good.
Thompson: Absolutely. I’ve eaten there several times, and it’s well worth it. That restaurant burned down in 2008, and they reopen, and they saved the facade of the building. And I think even the historic grill there was saved, and they still use it today. But it is a signpost on Route 66. It’s a place. It’s one of those must-stops. When you’re going through Stroud, you have to stop at the Rock Cafe.
Blackburn: You know, there’s a similar place that I like in Weatherford because I spent the last year there working on a museum exhibit. It’s a place that opened in the 1960s right on Main Street, which is Route 66, before the bypasses. It’s called Jerry’s. And when you said it’s got that atmosphere, the old restaurant, I don’t think they’ve, maybe they may have reupholstered the seats, but there are so many a local clientele, their names on the back of every one of the seats at the counter, and it probably has 20 counter seats. Then the booths, and the waitresses are there like it would have been in the 1960s, and it’s kind of a varied menu, but it’s all cooked right there on the grills. It’s the old Route 66 kind of food. And you get that sense of the 1960s architecture like you do at the Rock Cafe. And really that personal touch that you don’t get at a chain.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. What I love also about going and sitting down in these Route 66 restaurants is if you listen to some of the conversations at some of the other tables, most likely you will also hear languages that are not English being spoken because there are so many tourists— Japan, Europe, Eastern Europe— who want to come to Route 66, and they want to experience what they believe is this classic version of America, and they want to see it not from the highway buzzing by at 85 miles an hour. So you will meet people from all over who are having this experience.
Blackburn: In fact, I was surprised and pleased when we opened the Route 66 Museum in Clinton in 1995. For the first couple of years, I was following the business plan real carefully because it was a new business plan for us with earned revenue and local contributions, as well as state appropriation. So, this new partnership theory to see how was working. And the number one group of visitors who are not Oklahomans—Germans. We have more Germans than Oklahomans coming to Route 66 Museum the first couple of years.
Thompson: Yeah, it’s not uncommon now at that Route 66 Museum in Clinton to go look at their guest book and see in any given day, 10 or 12 countries represented in one day out there. That shows how much the route is drawing people, especially this year in the centennial year. Another cafe that I know that you’re very well familiar with is the Royce Cafe in Edmond, Bob. This one was started in 1933 when Royce Adamson, who was a newspaper editor at the Edmond Enterprise, sold his half of the business to his partner, and he decides to invest in a restaurant, and he starts offering round-the-clock meals. He is open 24 hours during, after the war. I’m talking World War II there. And in 1941, there was an article in the Edmond Enterprise that noted that the cafe had one of the largest payrolls in Edmond, with 23 people on staff. And he was also, it was also a place where you could get private banquet rooms, which was not necessarily all that common back in those days either. He ended up dying in 1942 at the age of 50. His wife continued operating the restaurant for another 15 years. This is what I found interesting, too. The Royce Cafe was one of the only restaurants in Edmond to receive the endorsement from food critic Duncan Hines, now, I didn’t realize that Duncan Hines was a food critic. All I was familiar with was the fact that you can go buy a Duncan Hines box of cake and make a cake with it, but apparently he was a food critic as well. He said the Adamses had made this place in a small town well known and recommended their waffles, steaks, hot bread, and 22 varieties of sandwiches. The restaurant was sold in 1958. It closed in 1970, but the building is still standing there in Edmond on Broadway.
Blackburn: Well, a little bit of personal knowledge there because I grew up in Edmond, when Edmond was a town of 4 to 5,000 people. When I left in ’67, it had grown all the way to 7,000 people. So people living in Edmond today can’t imagine that. But the nicest restaurant in town was Royce’s, and like the Rock Cafe, it was clad with native sandstone and probably would have quarried right there in the vicinity of Edmond, somewhere in that red sandstone red beds. But it was a fancy place to go, you know, to go to breakfast or something. You went downtown to Around the Corner. Some of these little places around town, drugstores as a place to eat. But if you wanted to spend a little money, you went to Royce’s. It was the nice place to go. And when I graduated from high school, 1969, that was one of the pre-prom party places that people would go before you went to the prom.
Thompson: Very nice, very nice. So you had a lot of meals there, I’m guessing?
Blackburn: Not many, because we didn’t have a lot of money in those days, but I did have a few.
Thompson: Very good. The last one I want to talk about is Pop Hicks’ Cafe in Clinton. And this is one that people still have a lot of nostalgia for. Unfortunately, it burned down a few years ago, and so nothing is left of it. And it was right next to the Glancy Motel, and the Glancy Motel was torn down too, unfortunately. But Ethan Pop Hicks, he was one of the earliest entrepreneurs in western Oklahoma that offered private meeting rooms and banquet rooms. He came to Clinton in 1930. He worked as a welder. Unfortunately, he was not very good friends with a man named William Bradford who operated the Bradford Cafe. And there must have been some beef there, because in 1936, Bradford approached Hicks in a manner that Hicks deemed to be threatening, and Hicks shot him with a 32-caliber pistol and killed him. He was not prosecuted. It was determined that the act was in self-defense, but lo and behold, Hicks starts managing the Bradford Cafe and then turns it into the Pop Hicks’ Cafe. So I don’t know what to make of this story, and I wish I would have had more time to get into some of the newspaper archives on this one.
Blackburn: The wild, wild West.
Thompson: Yeah, and so he manages this. He goes on to become the president of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association. He was also known, in the 1950s and ’60s, he welcomed Black travelers, and he didn’t segregate his restaurants. And so it was a place where African American travelers could stop. And he retired in 1968 but continued to operate. The cafe continued to operate. Unfortunately, the building was destroyed in 1999 by a fire. But I know, I go out to Clinton fairly frequently because that’s where our Route 66 Museum is, and people still speak with a lot of fondness about Pop Hicks’ Cafe. Yeah, or when Michael Wallis talks about Pop Hicks, he says it with such reverence. I love to hear Michael say Pop Hicks in his deep baritone voice. Yeah. And you just hear the respect that he had for him.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s take a quick break and then let’s talk to our guest on today’s episode, Kathy Anderson, about Chicken in the Rough.
Blackburn: Very good.
Announcer: Looking for a unique way to celebrate Independence Day? This July 4th, step back in time at History Alive! on the Cherokee Strip. Join us at the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center in Enid from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Experience a turn-of-the-century 4th of July celebration, and discover how Oklahomans marked Independence Day in the 1890s and early 1900s. Explore the historic Humphrey Heritage Village and enjoy hands-on activities, live music, and meet Oklahoma’s first governor, Charles Haskell. Then join in classic sack races, egg races, and other favorite 4th of July traditions from more than a century ago. Enjoy free popcorn or grab a hot dog from Okie Dokie Dogs. Museum galleries will also be open, making this a fun family outing for all ages. Admission is free for students. For details, visit the Oklahoma Historical Society’s calendar at okhistory.org. Celebrate America’s birthday by experiencing Oklahoma’s past only at History Alive! on the Cherokee Strip.
Thompson: Welcome back. We have a great guest with us today. Kathy Anderson is president of the Billboard Museum Association. She is also a marketing specialist at Petra Industries in Edmond and a freelance writer and video professional, having shot, edited, and/or produced several Route 66 videos for both commercial release as well as museum use. Kathy is also past president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association and an inductee into the Oklahoma Route 66 Hall of Fame. And Kathy recently wrote an incredible article in The Chronicles of Oklahoma, which if you all don’t know what that is, then that means you’re not a member of the OHS and you need to run as quickly as you can to our website at okhistory.org and become a member of the OHS because you’ll get this great a journal four times a year. But our most recent issue focused on Route 66 articles. And you wrote this great story, Kathy, about Chicken in the Rough, a historic restaurant on Route 66 here on Lincoln Boulevard, just north of the State Capitol, and I can’t wait to get into this story because it is fascinating. Welcome to the podcast.
Kathy Anderson: Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here.
Blackburn: In fact, I always want to add a little bit on the introduction. I met Kathy probably 20 years ago, and she’s one of the kind of people that I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for, because she collects history, tells stories, has a passion for it. She loves history. First time we met, she showed me a warehouse where she and some partner were collecting old historic signs. It was at least 20 years ago, Kathy. It may be more or less. If I can’t related to my son’s age. I know it’s sometime that decade, but about 20 years ago was when I first came down and looked at those signs, and we started working together. And you helped anytime we needed anything at Route 66 Museum or here at the History Center. So I want to give you a special welcome from a good friend.
Anderson: Thank you. I appreciate that very much.
Thompson: Well, and, Kathy, I’ve had a chance to get to know you through the Route 66 Centennial Commission. And also, we have worked together, we’ve got this Neon Sign Park project that we’re working on together, and I don’t know if there’s anybody more passionate about historic signage in Oklahoma than Kathy. Maybe Jim Gleason over at G&S Signs, who is also a partner of ours. Shout-out to Jim. We love working with Jim, but, I’ve just enjoyed getting to know you. And you are a passionate advocate for Route 66 also.
Anderson: Well, you know, my love affair with Route 66 actually started as a pre-teenager with the TV show Route 66. I had a huge crush on George Maharis.
Thompson: Okay.
Anderson: And, we were living in Pennsylvania at the time, and you know, it just, that crush kept Route 66 in the, in the back of my mind. When I moved to Oklahoma in 1980, I knew I was moving to a Route 66 state, but my interests were elsewhere. And I thought, well, you know, maybe I’ll drive some of it, but that seems a little self-indulgent, you know? So, you know, a luxury thing. I don’t have time for that. Then 66 became decertified and it’s like, oops, maybe I’ve lost my opportunity. Then I have some friends who give each other competitive, over-the-top birthday parties, one of which led us out on to Route 66 in Oklahoma, trying to find 36 total strangers to wish this other person a happy birthday.
Thompson: Oh, wow.
Anderson: And since I was the one with the video camera and access to editing equipment, I was tapped to do this. And it’s like, yes, I’m on Route 66, and I love it. And I want to keep doing this. And that led to, and that was about the time Michael Wallis’ book came out, which started that renaissance in terms of the US interest.
Blackburn: About 1990.
Anderson: Yes. So, people from overseas have always had that interest. And in a way, they kept 66 alive when Americans weren’t particularly interested in it. But his book started that renaissance. And so I was a part of that group, so got to know Marian Clarke with her wonderful cookbook, which is actually quoted here in Chronicles, in the article. And when I moved here in 1980, the only Beverly’s restaurant still in existence— well, there were two. I went to eat at the one at 23rd and Classen, which is Route 66. And honestly, I wasn’t particularly impressed. I think I even got the chicken, but that’s not their fault. My mom did not fry chicken. She baked chicken. So the only fried chicken I had been exposed to was KFC. So if it wasn’t KFC, it just tasted strange.
(laughter)
Thompson: Well, your article is called “The Untold Story of Chicken in the Rough: How Beverly Osborne and Route 66 Created— this is, quote unquote—“The World’s Most Famous Chicken Dish.” What made you interested to tackle this as a topic? And for those of you who may not know, when you write an article for The Chronicles, you don’t just get to sort of write what you want. Everything has to be fact-based and backed up by academic sources. So you have to have primary sources, newspaper articles, photographs, interviews. It’s not just something that you can pull up out of your head. What made you want to do the work to get this story out there?
Anderson: Well, I have 66 friends who, for gifts, would on occasion give me something Chicken in the Rough related. So I kind of started this little collection in my house. And then there was a new antique store I went to visit, and lo and behold, he had a lot of Chicken in the Rough stuff. A lot of it paper. And when he realized that I was kind of intrigued, he kept bringing me more paper over like a year and a half, because he’s only open one time a month. And so every time I go in, he’d have another batch of paper for me to look at. And so I’m flipping through the stuff, and it’s things that came from the estate sale 20-some years ago. And I was flipping through, and my mind just works this way. I’ve started connecting dots between all the pieces of paper. And after several months of collecting stuff, I realized there is a story here that hasn’t been told. But I don’t have enough information. So I kept getting more and more stuff. And then, I found out, I know you gentlemen are familiar with John Dunning, who loves history.
Blackburn: A hero of ours.
Anderson: Yes. And he was at that same estate sale, and so he had a bunch of Chicken in the Rough stuff, and he allowed me to go through what he had. And the biggest treasure he had was Rubye Osborne’s journal from 1948. And that, and I had already written a first draft of this article. But when I read the journal, I had to revise the front half of it because it provided insights nobody knew about.
Thompson: That’s incredible. Let’s jump into the Osbornes. Beverly Osborne was born in 1896, in College Mount, Indian Territory. He grew up in abject poverty, so much so that he decided to strike out on his own at eight years old because he thought he could get a better life. I can’t imagine that.
Anderson: That, to me, just typifies the risk-taking and gumption that he had from an eight-year-old to pull off this incredible Chicken in the Rough journey. I mean, this was not for someone faint of heart. He was a risk-taker. He proved that at age eight, and he kept proving it through his whole life. It frustrated the heck out of Rubye. She was not a risk-taker. Every time he did something, she just like, really? Why can’t we just have two restaurants and be happy, you know? He just kept pushing the limits.
Blackburn: You know, it’s probably part of the reason, too, that he was seen as so flamboyant. You know, if you grew up in poverty, you want a Cadillac. You want that Cadillac convertible. You want pretty girls hanging off the back of your convertible Cadillac. You want a big, fancy house. You want to talk big. You want to be the big man. And I think that he tried to do that throughout his life, and a bit of a rascal in some ways in his private life. My dad, who was a highway patrolman, got to know him as he did several community leaders at the time, you know, before repeal of prohibition. But he was a character.
Anderson: I am not surprised by that at all. And honestly, I’d like to hear more about that aspect because that obviously didn’t make the estate papers. It probably wasn’t in Rubye’s journal.
(laughter)
Anderson: No, no.
Thompson: Well, he meets Rubye. He’s working at a drugstore in Comanche, Oklahoma, and she was not raised in poverty. And her family, from what it appears, was not too thrilled about her taking up with Beverly because it was an unequal economic match, so to speak. But she said that she loved the guy, and somehow love finds a way.
Anderson: Yeah. She faced a lot of criticism from friends and family for her choice. I mean, he had an eighth-grade education. He dropped out after eighth grade, which at that time was really not that unusual. But she had had two years of college, so there was a big difference there. Obviously, her family was affluent. He had run away from home, very much the self-made man. I don’t know what the attraction was. My guess is he had a really wonderful personality, and I know from her journal that Beverly respected her opinion. They were a team. It wasn’t him just doing his own thing and she tagging along. They talked about everything. And for back then, I think that’s remarkable.
Thompson: Well, they got married in 1917, and pretty soon thereafter, they scrape up enough money to go to Oklahoma City, and he opens a small drugstore, but it only lasts a few months before they run out of money and have to close the store. And they’re right back to Comanche again and save up more money. They come back to Oklahoma City. He took a loan to buy Hunt’s Waffle Shop on Grand Avenue. But, yeah, I kind of wonder if this is a case of, he’s not afraid of losing money because he never had it to begin with.
Anderson: That’s an astute observation. I think you’re right. I think he also had a huge faith in his own abilities. I know faith in general was important to both he and Rubye, and for him to keep plugging away, they would identify where they went wrong. So, for example, at that drugstore they tried to open, they realized their failure was because they couldn’t get a pharmacist in there. And so you really can’t have a drugstore without a pharmacist. So when that failed, they knew it, and they bailed out. But they knew Oklahoma City is where they wanted to be, because that was the place for a young couple looking to get ahead.
Thompson: The Depression comes along, and by that time he’s opened a few restaurants, and the Depression wipes them out.
Anderson: Yeah, the Depression left them with two, and so they were they were hanging on, with their fingernails. It was a tough time for sure. I know they weren’t afraid of hard work. They would do whatever they had to do to survive. And, you know, they didn’t give up. They didn’t throw in the towel. They kept looking for a way to move forward.
Thompson: He finds this restaurant that he wants to open, 2429 North Lincoln Boulevard. For those of you who aren’t aware, that is just north of the State Capitol. And for those of you who are familiar with the Capitol, how it looks today, Bob, could you give us a sense of what that area north of the Capitol would have looked like in the 1930s?
Blackburn: Well, starting about ’35, it would have been filled with oil derricks and pumps and tanks and lots of noise and all of that associated with the oil patch. But, at that time, 23rd Street was still a surface road. And so when you get north of the Capitol, it was just a neighborhood on either side. And the little smaller houses, probably 1,000 square feet, 1,200 square feet, had been developed. But there wasn’t much town north of there. And people like Beverly Osborne and some of the other prominent families would build country estates as far north as 40th Street. That was considered out in the country at the time along the Deep Fork River. And so it was just barely developed. But, at that time, of course, Lincoln looked a lot different than it does now. And 23rd Street would have just been a regular east-west road.
Thompson: Today, Lincoln Boulevard, it doesn’t go right up to the front, or really it’s not the front side of the Capitol. It’s the back side of the Capitol. It used to go up and “T” at 23rd Street. Now we’ve got the whole clover Lane system that was put in in the 1970s, so it doesn’t do that anymore. In fact, Beverley’s was—the place that he bought—was probably located at about the place where the Will Rogers Office Building was now, if I’m, you know, roughly in the right geographic area. Kathy is saying I’m probably not right. So good. Correct me.
Anderson: Well, let me clarify something. As near as we can tell, it was a vacant lot. And then he had plans drawn up. Materials were delivered, and then that’s when they headed west in 1936. So there was nothing there. It was a huge risk. It was horribly expensive. We talk about in the article Rubye not liking debt. When she found out how much this was going to set them back, she threw up.
Thompson: Sixty thousand dollars.
Anderson: Yeah, she and you know, this is 1936. And I mean, she was very upset. And of course, 20/20 hindsight. Beverly never let her forget that she threw up.
(laughter)
Thompson: But it’s on that trip that this idea came about. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that, Kathy?
Anderson: Sure. There are legends on how Chicken in the Rough came to be. And they’re all conflations or ignorant guesses on actually what happened. And between Rubye’s journal and speeches that Beverly gave that I have hard copies of, a fuller story emerges. So, a cook at one of the two remaining restaurants they still had packed them a fried chicken lunch, and there were four people in the car— the managers of the second restaurant, and then Beverly and Rubye. They wanted to go out to California to come up with some spectacular ideas for what to serve on the menu for the new place on Lincoln. They really didn’t know. They wanted it to be upscale. They wanted it to be glamorous because all their other places were, you know, just diners. They weren’t anything special. So they wanted something special.
So they headed out on 66, and they got to around Amarillo; 66 was not fully paved at that time. They hit a bump, the chicken went flying, landed on the floor, and Rubye quipped, that’s chicken in the rough. And that phrase just resonated with everybody. And they talked about it all the way up out to California and all the way back, and they decided what they would do with that idea was to serve chicken without silverware, which was a no-no to eat with your fingers in public. Fine at home, but not in public. So they were going to do something a little daring, and they were a little concerned it actually would backfire, but they wanted to try it. So they came back. And he immediately hired an artist to create some kind of iconic logo. So Chicken in the Rough got translated into this golfing rooster trying to play his way out of the rough.
Thompson: Fantastic, I love this.
Anderson: And he just, he had a whole plan organized. So, you know, their three-week trip and back, I’m sure they just laid it all out, but he wanted to make sure everything was copyrighted, trademarked, patented, whatever needed to be done so he would be legally covered, which I think is very unusual for the time. I believe Big Boy out in California, it started as a standalone food dish, but he kind of lost control of it, and it eventually kind of turned into a whole chain.
With Chicken in the Rough, it was always just a menu item. So even in Oklahoma City, his restaurants were Beverley’s blah, blah, blah, blah. They were never called Chicken in the Rough.
Blackburn: My guess on that trip to California, another seed was planted in his mind for drive-ins. Southern California was the hotbed for drive-ins. So it comes out of the 1920s, long before the surfers. You know, we think of drive-ins and the surfers and, you know, happy. Whatever that TV show was. But, it really started in the ’20s and ’30s and the term carhop goes back to the time when cars had running boards, and as cars would drive in to a drive-in, the young, eager boys who wanted trips would go ahead and jump on the the running boards. And as you were coming in, they would be saying, what do you want? I’ll go get it real fast. And then they’d get a tip. So car, you actually were hopping on a car and riding them in. And my guess there were so many drive-ins in car-crazy California. That was another idea that he would use in at his store on Lincoln.
Anderson: I believe you’re right. I don’t know that Oklahoma City had had a drive-in up to that point. And when he started his place on Lincoln, it was Beverly’s Drive-In, and people who knew of the place later always wondered why it was called Drive-In, because it wasn’t a drive-in at that point. But it started as both drive-in and you could go inside and eat.
Thompson: And I just want to let people know, because you outline this in the article, what the meal was. It was five pieces from half a chicken unjointed, covered with long, crisp shoestring potatoes served on a buff colored platter, on which is emblazoned the four-colored trademark crest, a one ounce jar of honey, and buttered hot rolls or biscuits. And that completed the serving. And is anybody else hungry now? And he devised a way to cook this that was different than most other places cooked chicken. Correct, Kathy?
Anderson: That is correct. He devised a special griddle. I don’t know for sure, but I think he worked with a local fixture company, and they kind of put their heads together to figure something out. So when Chicken in the Rough was first introduced, it was fried chicken. There wasn’t anything special. But when he started working on the griddle, this is what set that food dish apart from any other piece of chicken you could get anywhere else. It was a combination griddle and steamer, so the chicken would go on the griddle, and a hood would go down over top of the griddle to trap the steam, and it gave it a very distinctive flavor. Of course, there were seasonings and things like that, and he would tweak with the seasoning recipes over time.
I know years later he contacted the Accent Company. You know, I don’t know if Accent’s still out there or not, but they created a special seasoning for him as well. So he was always looking to improve. But that griddle was, he got that patented. He was so proud of that griddle. And when you became a licensee, you leased the griddle. You could not buy it. You leased it. And in terms of his getting money from the franchise system, franchisees would pay a certain amount for every meal served.
Thompson: Okay, because it wasn’t the restaurant that was franchised, it was the meal.
Anderson: Correct. So any restaurant could choose to do Chicken in the Rough. However, there was a vetting process. They learned very early on they needed to be careful. They wanted to make sure the restaurant was a good restaurant. That would not give a bad connotation to their very special meal,
Blackburn: And I wanted to say something about that special recipe because unless you’ve grown up eating fried chicken as I did, chicken was the Sunday meal. Go out and find a chicken, wring its neck, have fresh chicken. Well, the trick to cooking fried chicken, and I still try it in a cast iron skillet, but to get the inside is done without the outside getting dry. And then the dark meat and the white meat cooks at different rates. So how do you equalize all of those things and make it more of a scientific so many minutes, rather than just watching it, turning it, doing it the way grandma did it is that the steamer would cook it down to the bone and release the flavors of the bone. Bone-in chicken is always better than just the filets.
And so, it would get down to release that flavor into the chicken and cook it all at about the same. And then a quick fry or grill, and then that would make it ready. So, for people out there who weren’t raised frying chicken, it is, there’s an art form to it. And Beverly found a way to bypass the art and make it more of a science.
Anderson: And in fact, in, a lot of his material he would send out to franchise holders, he would push the scientific method. And now I don’t know if that was a buzzword for the time or not, but, you know, it kind of let them know he wasn’t doing this by the seat of his pants. He had this researched, and you could count on this system working.
Thompson: So Chicken in the Rough, the restaurant, it opens in September of 1936.
Anderson: The drive-in.
Thompson: The drive-in. Yes. And, Thank you. It can get confusing with all his restaurants, but the drive-in opened in September 1936, and Beverly was expecting maybe 40 people on that first day, and they had 40 people by noon. And Rubye writes in her journal, “well, it literally took Oklahoma by storm. People were calling in, coming in from all over the state just to see and learn what it was all about.” So they caught lightning in a bottle here. This caught on.
Anderson: Well, and what’s interesting is before that opening day, people didn’t know what Chicken in the Rough was. They had no clue. And in Rubye’s journal, she relates the questions they asked her while they were waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting to get in to be served. Because they were just overwhelmed. So, I mean, my best guess was radio. I know he used radio a lot. So obviously there was an interviewer, an ad where he talked about the opening of the drive-in, and we’re going to be serving Chicken in the Rough, but he didn’t give a clue as to what it was, and that’s based on all the questions that she fielded.
So people came out of curiosity. This was a novelty. They wanted to know what it was all about, and for them to have made, and they came from all over the state. So, for them to have made the trip to the oil part of Oklahoma City, where there was nothing else out there, was kind of amazing. And this is in ’36, no less.
Thompson: Bob, it’s kind of interesting to think about today because so many meals we eat with our fingers. You know, fast food is a part of our culture now. We eat in our cars, driving from here to there, and everything is finger-food based. So it’s kind of interesting to think about a time when that wasn’t common.
Blackburn: Yeah, it is. And really, you have a look back at Oklahoma’s food culture. We’ve already discussed a little bit earlier about cafeterias, and cafeterias were more formal. It was like going to Granny’s for lunch after church on Sunday. You get a plate, you get your dessert, you get your knife and fork, napkins, sit down. You eat in a polite way. That was the tradition that most Oklahomans expected. And so this was kind of an urban new thing. It would have been part of this modern new generation that’s, you know, loving jazz music, the big band sound of the time and going to these crazy movies with these movie stars. It would have been part of the modern way of doing things. So it would have been revolutionary at the time.
Thompson: Reminds me of that scene in the movie The Founder, where Michael Keaton, who’s playing Ray Kroc, goes up to the McDonald’s restaurant at the window, and he orders, and he gets his food in a sack, and he kind of looks at him curiously and says, well, where do I eat this? And the attendant says, well, you know, you can go sit on the bench, you can eat it in your car. And he’s just really confused at this notion that he’s not going to sit down inside of a restaurant with, you know, fork and spoon and all of those kinds of things that it, even into the ’50s, this was still a relatively novel concept.
Blackburn: Well, and part of the magic was this was entertainment. You know, you eat food to survive, to work, to go ahead and plow the north 40, to work, you know, sunup to sundown, or you work to go to the factory. You know, most people eat because they have to for nutrition. But this was an age when going out was also entertainment. And what they did with Chicken in the Rough is provide an entertaining way to get out of the house, get in the car, go for a ride.
You know, you hear the term Sunday driver, maybe not so much in young generations. But when Kathy and I were growing up, you know, someone going slow and looking around and having a good night. That’s a Sunday driver. Because on Sundays for entertainment, you get in the car and go for a drive. That was fun. At that time today, why do you want to get out in traffic? But then it was a novelty. So to get out, go for a drive, get something to eat out of the house, that was entertainment. And of course, the woman of the house was making three meals a day typically and said, yeah, that is fun. That’s entertainment. So it is part of this whole social change, automobile culture, drive-ins. Just as life was changing, Beverly found the right formula at the right time.
Thompson: Yeah, it must have found the right price point, too, because, remember, we’re in the throes of the Great Depression, and people probably didn’t have a lot of disposable income, so it must have been a meal that people could afford
Anderson: $0.50. Hard to beat that. Chickens were pretty available at the time. And not only could you fry up or create the chicken itself, but then you could also sell the gizzards and livers as another side meal. So you were, as a restauranter, or you were able to really stretch that chicken in many different ways.
Blackburn: So talking about chickens, a story nearby in Nicoma Park. That was known as the poultry community. G. A. Nichols developed that on the Frisco Railroad and put a chicken coop behind every house so people could put in a chicken coop, sell the chicken, sell the eggs to the railroads that go into town every day, and then make their mortgage payments from the chicken income. And that was still a strong part of the community of Nicoma Park when Beverly started this restaurant. So, as Kathy said, people would have had chicken coops all over the place. People would have been raising chickens.
And this was before the big poultry farms. where you had 10,000 chickens cooped up. This is where they’re out roaming, and they probably tasted better because they weren’t being force-fed, you know, that genetically engineered corn or whatever it was, and they were eating the ticks in the yard and getting the food and the grain, and it just tasted better.
Thompson: Speaking of transportation, they had a deal with Braniff Airlines, where Braniff Airlines served Chicken in the Rough.
Anderson: That was one of the most surprising things that I learned while researching this article is in 1941, ’42, I mean, we’re talking World War II here. They had a deal with Braniff. So planes that landed in Oklahoma City, and it was pretty much the Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Chicago leg. People could order Chicken in the Rough. And, I don’t know how long that arrangement lasted. I actually contacted what’s left of Braniff, the research historical folks, and they hadn’t heard of that before. So I kind of felt proud that, like, hey, I discovered something. Make a note.
Blackburn: Another connect-the-dots is that the chairman of the board of Braniff Airlines about that time was Fred Jones of Fred Jones Ford and Mercury. He would have been a contemporary of Beverly. They probably played golf at the country club and hung out the men’s dinner club and did all these social things. And so they would have had a relationship. And he has, even though the headquarters had moved out of Fort Worth, he was chairman of the board.
Thompson: Kathy, do you know how many restaurants Beverly owned at kind of his peak?
Anderson: Well, so he owned, personally owned, the ones in Oklahoma City, and that number would vary over time. What was surprising to me is that he also co-owned one in Lawton and in Okmulgee, and those were around close to the war years, and that, it was like, okay, that, you know, he did expand beyond Oklahoma City for restaurants that he could claim as his own, but he you know, I mean, you’ve got boy, he had so many. It’s kind of hard to keep track of them all. But you’ve got, many of them were on Route 66.
The most puzzling one that we know very little about was the Rough-A-Teria, which was on 39th Street, which is what most people associated with Route 66. It only lasted a few years. Couldn’t find any photos, couldn’t find any information other than the original press release, tracked it in the phone book. Saw when it dropped out. So, it was like two years. And maybe, you know, if they listed all the restaurants on the menu, you know, that would go to all of them. It would be there. But that was it. That’s a big puzzler.
Blackburn: Well, I know where my favorite one was. It was on Grand Avenue next to the Colcord building. It’s now called Sheraton. They changed the name in the in the ’60s, but on Grand Boulevard, it was open 24 hours a day. And when us college kids from Weatherford would come in Oklahoma City looking for action, and you wanted a place to eat at 2 o’clock in the morning and get your head straight. There were two places— the Big Boy and Beverly’s downtown. That was open 24 hours right there, because downtown was still pretty active in the ’60s. And so people staying in the downtown hotels, the Skirvin would have been going strong. The Black Hotel, the Skirvin Tower for a little while and some of those other hotels. So people would have been down there and using. And that was just a small little diner.
Anderson: And that was the Waffle House, his first Waffle House that he bought. That was Hunt’s, and he expanded it over time. But that was kind of the constant for all of the changes with the restaurants. That location, his first location was there for like, until urban renewal took it out.
Thompson: In the 1980s, we had the Burger Wars, but in the 1930s and ’40s, or maybe later, when did we have the Chicken Wars?
Anderson: So, you would expect that there would be competitors because he was enormously successful. And yes, there was a competitor right here in Oklahoma City in 1939, Robert Burbridge, who was a serial entrepreneur, had a printing empire behind him, which allowed and gave him the stability to do, you know, all kinds of things. I guess he thought I could do the same thing Beverly is doing, but better. And he came up with Chick-in-Hand. That was his process of cooking chicken. It was not the same. He had it patented as well, and he set up shop right across the street. I mean directly across the street from the drive-in on Lincoln. And he had a big ol’ sign, and I know that the drive-in knew about him because they have pictures of that sign shot from their parking lot. So they were very aware that there was a competitor across the street. And the Burbridge family lore is that employees from the drive-in would come over and maybe slash some tires.
Thompson: Oh, wow.
Anderson: And maybe stuffed things down the toilets to kind of sabotage the business, to kind of force them to go away. Burbridge did close the restaurant. He stuck with it for a few years. He actually called it, was it the little sisters? Two Sisters, Two Sisters for his daughters, and he franchised. The franchise lasted longer than the restaurant proper.
Blackburn: And some of our listeners out there might know the name Bobbie Burbridge Lane, who was a philanthropist and social leader here in town, that is one of the Bobbies in the name. And then her son is Wes Lane, who is a former district attorney here in Oklahoma County. So Wes Lane is the grandson of that Burbridge that started that restaurant.
Thompson: Yeah, I’ll be darned. Wow.
Anderson: Small world.
Thompson: As Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story. Well, by the 1970s, you know, at one time they had over 300 Chicken in the Rough franchises. I’m guessing that’s over 300 restaurants that that meal was being served in across the United States. By 1978, Beverly sells the rights to Chicken in the Rough outside of Oklahoma or Oklahoma City to Jack Carroll. And in 1979, he sells it to Randy Shaw, who is a veteran employee with the Osborne family. And the franchise just kind of goes down after that.
Anderson: Well, it was it was already going down. In the ’70s, the sanitation code changed for the kitchen. And his prized special grill no longer met code, and they really struggled to figure out a way to cook the chicken so it would still taste the same. And I suspect they lost a lot of franchises at that time.
I also know he just wasn’t as involved, directly involved with the system. He had other interests. And as he got older, he would explore them. He loved to fly. He loved to fish. He loved his cars. He loved a lot of different things. And as other people took over responsibilities for the franchise system, he didn’t have to be directly involved. He might write a little op-ed for the franchise newsletter, but that would be it. And in the late ‘50s, actually, the whole licensing system, the control of it, all of that moved out of state. So he was already starting to let go, and he had actually tried to sell off the franchises earlier, but somehow the deal fell through. And so it wasn’t until much later that he was successfully able to sell things off. So, you know, his interests changed.
And, let’s face it, America’s dining habits were changing. And this was a chicken dish; you went to a sit-down restaurant, and I’m sure those were struggling as drive-ins and fast foods became more and more part of the American landscape. So there’s that whole other aspect that obviously he had no control over.
Blackburn: And one other little element there would have been early television. Television first goes on the air in Oklahoma City in 1949, Tulsa in 1950. And suddenly people were staying home. They weren’t going out to eat as much. So a lot of restaurants had to change their business formula that was built around movies, because even little towns like Edmond, where I grew up, you know, a few thousand people at Broncho Theater, there was an early serving before the movies and a late serving after the movies, and restaurants could build their business plan around it. Television changed all of that. And so takeout became that, a quick serve instead of what Beverly was doing into the restaurant business. Well, it’ll wear people out, it’s a hard business. You work 18-hour days if you’re really making money. It’s a low-margin business. And, it probably wore him out.
Anderson: Yeah. And I know from very early on he pushed the idea of takeout. I happen to have one of the very early takeout boxes. I believe the same one is in the exhibit here at the History Center. And he would encourage his franchise holders, do takeout, do delivery, do whatever it takes to move the meal.
Thompson: There’s not much left of Chicken in the Rough nowadays, but here in Oklahoma City, there is a Beverly’s Pancake House on Northwest Expressway. And can you still get Chicken in the Rough there?
Anderson: Absolutely. It is on the menu. It cost more than $0.50, though.
(laughter)
Blackburn: And the sign that they see there on the highway is half of one of the original signs. The other half, I know exactly where it is because it’s here in the History Center. Yes, we purchased that, and our common friend Cameron Eagle somehow acquired that last sign and refitted them. One for that restaurant and one for us. And it’s hanging here next to our Sonic exhibit. We have that in our Commerce gallery on the first floor. So we’d love for all of you to come see that sometime. Kathy, this has been really enlightening, going back in time and looking at Route 66, Lincoln Boulevard here in Oklahoma City, and exploring the story. Thank you so much for filling us in and for writing the article, too.
Anderson: Well, it was my pleasure. Once I get an idea in my head, I got to spit it out. And so once I started connecting those dots, it’s like I got to write. I got to write the story. I mean, it was almost two years worth of collecting material, researching, and then finally the writing went fairly fast. But it was a wonderful journey, and I was taken aback when I was talking about this to somebody else. And they said, so what are you going to write next? I don’t know,
Blackburn: Well, maybe it’ll be you out on Route 66, and along comes a ’65 Corvette with a George Maharis lookalike in it. We want to know the rest of the story.
Anderson: There is a rest of the story, actually. Okay, Route 66 Magazine, which is now defunct. They were doing an article on George Maharis. I had no idea he was still alive, but it was well-known within the 66 community how I first got interested in Route 66. So they told George—I’m so embarrassed. They told George Maharis my story. And he said to them, well, tell Kathy I said hello.
Blackburn: And you melted.
Anderson: Oh, I screamed like a teenybopper.
(laughter)
Thompson: And in case you want to see it, in our new Route 66 exhibit, we don’t have the Corvette that they used in the series, but we do have a 1961 Corvette in the exhibit here, which was the year model that they drove in that series. So, you should come see that as well. Well, Kathy, thanks for being with us today. It’s been great.
Anderson: My pleasure.
Thompson: Well, Bob, I enjoyed that conversation with Kathy. I learned a lot that I didn’t know about Chicken in the Rough, and the fact that it was right here, just right across the street from where we are at the Oklahoma Historical Society today at the History Center. All of that history right there. Unfortunately, that building and that whole area is gone from when they tore down all those buildings in the 1970s to make way for the cloverleaf.
Blackburn: Yeah. And, you know, the conversation was a good combination of this spirit we have in Oklahoma. The, you know, innovation, ingenuity, trying, taking a risk. Supply and demand, you know, and that’s what Beverly Osborne was doing. He was just playing around with different ideas, a way to make a living. Support his family, and he hit on the right formula at the right time. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ve enjoyed this conversation.
I want to encourage everybody out there. Go find a restaurant. Go find a good place to eat out on Route 66 this year. I promise if you talk to a few people, you might make a few friends. And this is a good year to get out on the highway and have a meal.
Blackburn: It is. Thank you, Trait.
Thompson: Thank you, Bob. We’ll see you next time.
Blackburn: All right.
(upbeat music playing)
Thompson: You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
