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After-parties among the glamorous elites make headlines, but as I am neither glamorous nor elite, growing up here we had to create our own after-parties. But indeed, we did have them.
After any ballgame, Carolina “Sweets” clogging practice, or taking a break from cruising downtown Murphy, there was one place that was like our Mel’s Diner from American Graffiti – Dale Dockery’s Bizzy Burger, where the Sherwin-Williams Paint store in Murphy is today.
No matter what school, Andrews, Murphy, Hiwassee Dam, Hayesville or even Copper Basin, Tenn., on a Saturday night you would pass through that crowded restaurant parking lot, stepping up to the window to order, seeing and being seen, making friends, contacts and on occasion witnesses the break-up of romances sometimes aided with the help of a slap to a face, making the moment legend.
Their burgers were perhaps the best in the world – or maybe it was just because the thought of that burger brings back the memories of the beautiful young girl sitting beside me on those Saturday nights. Unforgettable memories have originated with far less inspiration.
The Tastee-Freeze was the only chain food franchise here in those days, so good burgers were appreciated and valued more from independent grills. For instance, I defy you to find anyone who ever complained about the burgers from Decker’s Grill, or a hamburger steak from O’Dell’s Restaurant.
McAfee’s Pool Hall’s burgers and hot dogs gained such acclaim that Junior McAfee eventually closed the pool hall and operated a successful restaurant for many years downtown. Living 22 miles from Murphy made any meal in a commercial restaurant an event, which included any hamburger.
That is not to slight the existing burger spots in Murphy, headed by Burger Boy. I suppose there is something in adding “Burger” to your name raises the bar when it comes to hamburgers – and they succeed. Chevelles comes in a close second, with a discounted burger menu one night a week, and one cannot leave out Main Street with a drive-through and a burger, fries and drink for under $8.
But as much as I enjoy those today, I would pay twice the price for one of those aforementioned burgers. I leave out national chains for obvious reasons.
I was living in Chattanooga, Tenn., when McDonald’s opened in Murphy, and a Sunday school class member had Murphy on his salesman’s route. He mentioned in class that when he made his sales calls here several local residents asked him, “Have you eaten at McDonald’s yet?”
On that particular day, I did not mention that I hailed from Murphy – but it’s an illustration of the fascination with burgers.
For my personal preference, the best burger of memory from those days did not come from a restaurant but from the small lunch counter at Mauney’s Drugstore. It is the standard by which I judge all hamburgers today, constantly searching for the one that is closest to that original taste.
That hamburger had been perfected by Louise Colbert, who cooked the burgers at home and brought them to the grill. Upon ordering a burger, the pre-cooked patty was placed between tinfoil strips and, along with the bun, toasted on a grill. The heated patty went on the now-toasted bun with mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, lettuce and tomato. The lightly toasted bun’s texture in that first bite still makes my mouth water, even as I write this.
To add icing on the cake, I could wash that first bite down with a vanilla Coke from the fountain.
Mauney’s Drugstore hosted all the prescriptions for our family. Any journey to town meant a stop there – and I suspect my Mom’s love of a good burger had something to do with us usually enjoying a burger while Harry Mauney filled our orders.
The closest I can come to describing one of those burgers is a combination of a cook out burger crossed with a Central Park drive-through with a dash of Whataburger thrown in.
Try as I might, I have been unable to duplicate one of those Mauney hamburgers. And like so much of our lives, they exist now only in memories.
It would be in later years that I would sit in a wooden booth at Mauney’s across from a beautiful black-haired girl in a red top and white pants imprinted with red hearts and ask her to go steady. She worked at Mauney’s after school. I eventually married that girl.
Every hamburger eaten since then is measured by Mauney’s. The ultimate compliment for a burger between us is “You know this one tastes almost like those hamburgers from Mauney’s.”
The restaurant business is precarious at best, and with the coming of chain burger franchises taking their share of the market, far too many of our favorite eateries are quickly passing things. I have no clue where teenagers go after a ballgame these days.
In Murphy, there is no longer cruising – making that never-ending loop back and forth in rumbling loud-mufflered muscle cars between what was then Brumby’s (a dance studio today) to left at what was then Murphy General, another left and returning to Peachtree Street in front of the Professional Building, and repeat, for hours, with windows down. Few cars had air conditioners, and we needed the open windows for conversations with the occupants of the other cars, carloads of boys chasing carloads of girls until they pull into the parking spots beside each other. More than a few romances and marriages in this county began that way.
I admit in modern times I have made that cruising circle, for old-time’s sake. If you observed me doing that, you could write it off as a nostalgic old man remembering – or perhaps a man searching for a good hamburger that no longer exists.
Bruce Voyles’ local history column runs every other week in the Cherokee Scout. Email him at RoadsLessTraveled@cherokeescout.com.