I think Chicken in the Rough is fried chicken.

I enjoy what you do

Any info on Bell’s Drive-in in Raleigh around 1960? I remember going there a couple times at night with neighbors and it was a lively place…the kind of place where you ate in the car. It was packed with college kids, so I’m thinking it was out Hillsborough maybe where the beltline was constructed. I know there was another drive-in there, towards Meredith, Roy’s or Roger’s, and they had curb service, closed for many years but now long gone. And there was the Big Boy on Downtown Blvd. that had car service, ate there many times as a kid. But I can’t place Bell’s.

Skillet – good call on fried chicken. I’ve never heard that term ‘in the rough’ before.

Curt — thanks for the low-down on ‘Chicken in the Rough.’ I still don’t remember it though.

Pineview — Johnny’s was just up the road from Circus (which was an open-air Dairy Queen back in the ’60s). Johnny’s grill is now the ‘Zanziba Club,’ the motor lodge is now the ‘Capitol Inn’ and the supper club is an asphalt parking lot — all exceedingly tawdry and seedy.

hollywoodgirl — don’t remember Bell’s. The first fast food burger joint I remember was ‘Chiips’ right where Downtown Blvd crosses Crabtree Creek. Hamburgers were 15 cents. It later became a Hardees and now a car dealership is there, I think.

RaleighNative — def remember Shoney’s. That over life-sized statue of the ‘Big Boy’ at the restaurant entrance used to creep me out.

DavidB — Thanks for the comps! Hope you will keep reading Goodnight Raleigh!

Remember when Andy Griffith opened a restaurant I think by the Arlen’s…his big smiling face on the side of the building, easily seen from the highway, very disturbing. Didn’t last long. Shoney’s, when it was just Big Boy, had the ordering machines you would talk into. This was 1959-60 or so. I remember the machines being out of commission for quite some time before being removed. Nine cent hamburgers at Bell’s must have been real health food. It’s a wonder we survived 1960’s cuisine. Now we won’t even drink unfiltered water.

WHO REMEMBERS THE WINDMILL ON SOUTH SAUNDERS ST?WE WOULD ALL DRIVE INTO RALEIGH TO GO TO THE WINDMILL FOR GOOD FOOD AND CURB SERVICE.MY MEMORIES OF THAT GO BACK TO THE EARLY FIFTIES.

I had forgotten about the Windmill also. Wow!

Plantation Inn was razed several years ago for a strip mall. That entire area is nothing like it used to be.

Swains on New Bern became several nightclubs before being closed because of violence in the parking lot. Not sure what’s going on there now.

Don Murray’s restaurant building is now a pawn shop, I believe. I remember being fascinated by that little house.

The Westinghouse Building is a fairly nice office space now. I think the city of Raleigh owns it.

Does anyone remember when there was a drive-in movie on US#1 (now Capital Boulevard) where the beltline is? I’ve seen aerial pictures of the area from the 1950s that clearly shows one being there. There was also one farther out (The Forest) and one on 64 (The Tower).

I love these threads.

Yes, but I was told by a bad boy, if traffic by the Center Drive-in was running slow enough, and you wore Polaroid lens sunglasses at night, you could peek between the poles of stadium floodlights they had put up so tender young eyes wouldn’t be polluted by lust, and if you peeked successfully you could catch a glimpse of naughty bits. Seems like a lot of work for not much payoff.

I grew up across the street from Johnny’s. We used to listen to the bands play there @ night on the weekends. Johnny’s Drive Inn was a great place to go for curb service to get a PBR on the weekends when we were in high school…they weren’t real sticky about checking ID. The Circus used to be a Dairy Queen. Shoney’s definately had curb service….Shoney’s to Hardees (across from the Farmer’s Market was our cruise route…with frequent trips to Bells and The Piggy Park/Kwix. On Weekend nights WKIX manned a booth @ The Piggy Park and took requests.

Ronnyg — I think the flooding must have been the impetus for Johhny to build a house in 1958 across the road on Fenton St., in the new neighborhood ‘Woodcrest’ (where I grew up). I well remember he had the only enclosed garage in the neighborhood, the electric door of which had a huge gothic letter “G” emblazoned on it!

Piggy Park was across the Blvd from Bells. What is now known as Castle Adult Videos.

I also grew up in Woodcrest. My family moved there in 1958. I hadn’t thought about Chiips or the Griffins’ house with the “G’ on the garage in years. Many thanks to Raleigh Boy for so many posts that enable me to see places in Raleigh I knew so well in my early years.

Great read. All these things bring back memories. I worked at Bells for years. Fantastic job. I was away at school and whenever I came home and wanted to work, just went to Bell’s, put on my apron and the manager, Bill Dove, would just say “Welcome back, and don’t forget to mop the women’s john.”
Piggy Park was the big deal, along with Chips and Shoney’s. We rode around those places until we were sick. Later on, a friend who had left for Vietnam when we were riding Bell’s, Shoney’s, Chips, Bell’s, Shoney’s, Chips began doing it like we did before he left. When we told him no one did it any more, he seemed really sad.
So many great places are now gone. All the places that were mentioned and another, Wayne’s Rollercade, which is now buried under the Beltline. Many fantastic hours spent there.

I’m a little younger than some of the other readers here. I was four in 1962 and don’t know where Wayne’s Rollercade was located. Someone said that it’s buried under the Beltline, but where was it near? I can’t remember a time before there was at least part of the Beltline.

Correction…”not positive of that” I meant to say.

Of course, old time Raleigh folks sometimes refer to the southern portion of the Beltline as new because it was the last section completed. According to this site, it opened in 1984:
http://www.gribblenation.com/ncpics/raleigh/beltline.html

(Some fascinating maps on that page, but it hasn’t been updated in 8 years, so other info may no longer be accurate.)

I believe the restaurant you are talking about was Sauls BBQ. They used to either dip or coat their french fries and they were fantastic.

Wow !!! Sauls barbecue. Loved those fries!
Wayne’s Rollercade! My first chance to hold a girls hand while couple skating !

Did the original Johnny’s have a “Johnny’s” monogram on their drinking glasses? I am looking at an old photo of my fathers from the late 1940’s to the early 1950’s. (I grew up in Durham.) He is with a group of people in a restaurant or club. All the clear drinking glasses are monogramed. Zooming in on one glass, under the “Johnny’s” logo, I can make out the end of what looks like “..gh, N.C.”. I am thinking that it says “Raleigh, N.C.” and I came across this page. The writing is fancy, similar to say the Coca-Cola logo.

There use to be Drive-in restaurant on Hillsboro Street almost under the beltline bridge it was the drive-in restaurant It was on the left side coming from downtown Raleigh I cannot think of the name of it to save my soul it had some of the best hamburgers in Raleigh does anybody remember it

I want to see if any carhops are still around that caught curb at Johnnys Drive-in grill on Capital Blvd. I have a collection of the cards of the name of the carhops that were serving us in the 1950’s. I was dating then and we always went to Johnny’s after going to the Drive-n theatre. Ordered the best Cheeseburger and Chocolate shake. Now that was the good ole’ days. People do not know how to have fun today.
Today my last name is Russell. If anyone remembers these times please try to get in touch with me. I would love to talk about old times.

Thanks

I found a matchbook in my grandmother’s scrapbook she made in 1945 with an advertisement for Whispering Pines Drive In located “2 miles South on 15A Raleigh NC,” which seemingly negates Johnny’s stance that his was the first.