Vivian Courtney's Hollywood Restaurant

Once this restaurant's namesake, Vivian Courtney (click on her name to view a video tribute to her and photos of the inside of her restaurant), died in 2004 it was closed. The main building, which was as unique as the sign, was leveled (wished I'd taken a shot of it before it was bulldozed) but the place's unique sign remains to this day.

In fact, if you want the sign you can have it. John T. Roberts posted this @ Fort Worth Architecture, "If anyone is interested, the old neon Vivian Courtney's Restaurant sign is available to anyone who wishes to take it away. It is a two-sided exposed neon sign with the letter 'V' on top. It sits at the corner of Jacksboro Highway and Roberts Cut-Off Road @ 5915 Jacksboro Highway. I tried to find a home for it with two organizations but they did not have a place to put it. Now I'm offering it to anyone who thinks they can remove it and preserve it. The sign is about 28 feet tall and about 12 feet wide at the widest point."

Me and my friends ate their several times. It was a cool a place, with photos and posters from Old Hollywood --- we're talkin' John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Gone With The Wind, etc. --- hanging on the walls and in each booth there were equipped with miniture jukeboxes that really worked. You put in a quarter and got to choose three songs.

It had a buffet at lunch or you could order off the menu. The eats were simple good ol' white trash cuisine dishes.

A beautiful place that is now in the dustbin of history. Too bad. To me, the old stuff is, and still will be, the best stuff.

Yeah, as I get older I cherish the good ol' days more.

Yes, I'm sentimental but that comes with age and there's nothing wrong with getting older because you get smarter and realize that the modern stuff is just stuff that's not worth a damn (iPods & cell phones, for example) in my opinion.

Arby's (created in Texas)

When me and two ladies from work went to Thrift Town, on Jacksboro Highway in far west Fort Worth, Texas, I decided to take pictures of the surrounding area while they shopped. In the same shopping strip as the thrift store was an Arby's with one of its original huge neon signs, which looks like a tall ass cowboy hat. I wanted to document this bad ass sign so I took this picture of it. I love the colors, maroon, yellow and white. And look at the words "HURRY IN" followed by a notice that the place is "OPEN LATE". So why be in such a hurry if it's open late?

My second ex-wife told me she once worked at an Arby's in Erie, PA, her hometown, and said that the 'roast beef' was actually a HUMONGOUS and heavy piece of frozen meat formed into a round ball that they cut up in the back. So just think of that when you bite into one of their roast beef sandwiches. I know they're good but that shit arrives totally frozen and in a huge ball-like mass.

Yeah, I want to "hurry in" and eat that shit. NOT.

Anyways, here's an interesting tidbit I found on Wikipedia.org about Arby's:

"In the mid to late 19th century, a saloon was founded in West Texas by a retired Civil War Captain, Daniel J. Arby. The saloon gained much renown throughout the pan-handle for it's fine southern food and large gaming hall. After five years of outstanding popularity among Texans, Arby decided to expand his saloon to neighboring towns where the menu expanded and included his famed roast beef sandwich and family recipe barbecue sauce. After generations of the Arby family passed down the recipes and the saloon chain gained popularity in the early 20th century, the saloon was updated to restaurant status and included nightly entertainment (everything from magicians to minstrel shows). In the 1930s the family lost almost everything as the United States fell deeper into the Great Depression and was forced to sell their beloved restaurant chain. The Arby's name changed hands over the next 30 years, being owned at one point by the great Howard Hughes, until it was finally bought by brothers Forrest and Leroy Raffel in Ohio, who were determined to own a fast food franchise based on a food other than hamburgers. The brothers were insistant on changing the name to the preferred name of "Big Tex," but that name was already being used by an Akron businessman. They eventually decided on the Arby's moniker, based on R.B., the initials of the Raffel brothers [1] and also because they realized they could accomplish this without changing the original name, thus Arby's, LLC was born. (By coincidence, R.B. can also be short for roast beef, the company's main product, a point which was used when the backronym "America's Roast Beef, Yes Sir" was used as an advertising campaign in the 1980s.) They maintained the cowboy hat logo in reverence of the humble beginnings of the fast-food chain."

UPDATE: This sign is gone. So is the Arby's restaurant. It's boarded up. This is why I take photos around town of stuff like this knowing at some time or another it will be gone to make way for something new, er, worse. It's important to document with your camera your surroundings because one day a picture you took something of will no longer exist.

LOW DAILY EEK LY RATES

My buddy, Motel Todd, got his nickname, bestowed upon him by yours truly by living at the Caravan Inn for a year and a half, from March '98 to October '99.

This motel has been at its same location, at the corner of Jacksboro Highway and River Oaks Boulevard in Fort Worth, for as long as I can remember, and that's way back to the '60s.

In fact, my step-father told me a funny story, that I can't recall the particulars of at the moment, about him driving his car into the place's pool in the '60s.

Todd's room was a typical motel room with the usual amenities. I think he paid $520 a month for his one room, though he had to pay weekly and he didn't have a kitchen but used a microwave and cooler instead. He said the free coffee was in the lobby sitting on a little table in the corner.