A quick note: This was originally written in December 2002 on my old site “Inane Crap” as part of an occasional series called “Somewhere Else”, which detailed random road trips and travels. Since I mentioned this essay on the latest episode of the podcast, I decided to reprint it here. It hasn’t been changed except for some proofreading edits.
-Tom
The interior of the Roy Rogers at the Indian Castle Service Plaza on the New York State Thruway. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Soundtrack for this Trip: Counting Crows, “Hard Candy” and Jimmy Eat World, “A Praise Chorus”
Somewhere else? Well yeah. The idea was that having a good part of the day to myself, I would take off for a while and journal my experience. I have spent a lot of time reading other people’s accounts of their travels and while I won’t be driving from one end of the country to the other any time soon, a day trip is just as good. Do you have an idea of somewhere I should go that’s not too far from where I am? Contact me.
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
11:00 a.m.: Sayville, New York
“I didn’t think that she returned it,
We left New York in a whirl …”
So I’ve promised that I would go to Best Buy with Nancy if she went on this little mini-road trip with me. After all, my parents are in need of a new universal remote, seeing that years of throwing the current one across the room at one another have caused it to stop working. Hey, I know I should have been less lazy throughout the years and maybe walked the remote over to the person on the other couch, but that’s a moot point now. Besides, shit happens.
Anyway, one of the great myths about Long Island is that there are no Roy Rogers restaurants, something anyone from the area will tell you with an authoritative tone, even though “Long Island” to them probably doesn’t extend east of Patchogue. I believed it myself for years, until last December when Amanda and I were driving to Smith Point and I passed the Roy Rogers in Shirley. It was kind of like a mirage, something I couldn’t believe was there, because I hadn’t been on William Floyd Parkway in Shirley for years, not since I used to go to the beach with my grandparents in their camper. The Roy Rogers was there then, and still is.
There used to be a lot more of these restaurants on Long Island, but I believe the corporate ownership of Roy Rogers’ changing hands over the last 10 or 15 years has led to their being eradicated throughout the northeast, with the exception of turnpike, thruway, and interstate rest stops, where the restaurant has taken on a very mythic role, at least for wayward Long Islanders like myself. In college, the highlight of driving home from Baltimore was stopping at a Roy’s and having a cheeseburger, fries, and two biscuits.
Of course, I’d end up stopping again further up the road because let’s face it–greasy buttermilk biscuits don’t necessarily make for good driving food. But that didn’t matter, because since the Roy’s at the corner of Johnson Avenue and Sunrise Highway closed and their burgers and biscuits became only available on the highway, the restaurant became a must-stop destination. I’m apt to say that Roy Rogers is the Howard Johnson’s of my generation–a fast fix, a good meal, and one that is slowly disappearing from our nation’s highways.
As we head down Sunrise Highway, I am also wondering if my first visit to a non-turnpike Roy Rogers in a few years isn’t going to be one of those bad nostalgia letdowns. I mean, I have great memories of Roy’s in Sayville from when I was in elementary school. Tom Hackett and I would get cheeseburgers and load them up with so many fixins that we could barely get our mouths around what we were calling “Buster Burgers.” We also once had a conversation about fried chicken–how we preferred breasts to legs–that probably could have been misinterpreted by anyone listening in if we weren’t 12 years old. So my question during this trip, of course, is will my memories of the place be soured by what is more than likely sub par fast food?
Foreground: my sister, eating a chicken sandwich. Background: my 1998 Honda Civic.
11:30 a.m., Shirley, New York
“Someone is going to ask you what it’s all about
Stick around, nostalgia won’t let you down.”
Of course, my sister finds it hilarious that I want to go to a Roy Rogers with her and take pictures of her eating a chicken sandwich. However, that’s because she’s one of maybe five people in this world who are as odd as I am. For the record, I get a cheeseburger but opted to take it plain because I am craving French fries more than I am craving burger. And I don’t go for the biscuits because being that this is the first fast food burger I’ve eaten since March of 2001, I don’t want to make myself too sick. Besides, I’m just here for the ambiance.
And what ambiance it is. The deep red and tan walls, the western-themed paintings, the garbage can with “Thanks” carved into its swinging door, the serve-yourself soda machine with Fanta root beer, and the fixins bar. Oh, the fixins bar. That’s what always made Roy Rogers so great, right? You could add as many pieces of lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onions as you wanted, as well as ketchup, mayo, mustard, and horseradish. You could very well make the ultimate burger out of something that was probably two steps above the late, lamented Marriott Burger of my alma mater.
Nancy and I finish our food and head for westbound Sunrise Highway so we can stand in line at Best Buy for 10 minutes and run into one of our neighbors on the way through the parking lot. We return to Sayville at around 12:30, and considering we’ve gone shopping on Christmas Eve, that’s not too bad a trip and I can rest happily. Well, at least until I have the desire to go somewhere else.
