I was surfing through an article about restaurant chains that are no longer with us when I found one that surprised me.
I wasn’t at all shocked to see Burger Chef, which was probably the worst of the big chains, or Sambo’s, which was sort of the racisr version of Denny’s.
But when Red Barn popped up, it brought a smile to my face.
I hadn’t thought about Red Barn for years, but I worked there in 1970, first as a summer job and second as what was actually the first adult job I ever really had.
I was 20 in the summer of 1970, and I was the second assistant manager (the title was actually Third Man) and was running the restaurant two nights a week. The manager was a young guy with a hot car, only a few years older than me. The assistant manager was 38 years old and a fairly serious alcoholic.
I had led a fairly sheltered life, and it was the first time I remember coming to work at 7 a.m. and working with a guy who had serious alcohol on his breath.
He was more than a little bit creepy too. One morning when things were slow, he started talking about how pretty one of our part-timers was. I agreed that Denise was beautiful, although I thought she was a little bit young for me at 16.
Then the creep, whose name was Bob, said, “Yeah, she’s really gorgeous, but I can’t get her interested in me sexually.”
“Bob, she’s 16 years old!”
He shrugged. A month or so later, he was fired for coming to work drunk.
And that was when I got my first adult job. The owner of the restaurant and the manager asked me if I could take over as assistant manager and work full-time. I was going to school, but in the process of tanking because of a broken heart at the end of my first real love affair.
It was an interesting place for a fast-food outlet, one of the few that had a burger menu and a fried chicken menu.
We were right next door to a Burger King, and since we were allowed to have a free meal during our shift, we occasionally traded off with kids from the Burger King. They would have our chicken and we would have their Whoppers.
We had some funny moments. A drunk came in one evening and ordered a Big Mac. The kid at the counter told him our sandwich was called the Big Barney. The drunk slammed his fist on the counter and said, “Dammit, I want a Big Mac.”
The kid gulped and said, “One Big Mac, coming right up.”
My most bizarre moment at the counter came when a mother and daughter came in and started ordering. The daughter couldn’t have been much older than 18 or 19, and she was gorgeous with a great figure. I knew how great because she was wearing a completely transparent blouse and no brassiere.
We had a Navy enlisted man who was working part-time for us, and he ragged on a high school kid who worked the grill by giving him the nickname “Sack,” as in “Sack of Shit.”
I guess the kid thought having a nickname — even a bad one — meant he was part of the gang, because one day he was running late and he called to tell us. I answered, and he said, “Mike, this is Sack …”
A weird place. I closed the restaurant vie nights a week and I had to walk across the parking lot to do a night deposit of the cash we took in.
An adult job.
I lasted till December and then was just too run down from school and work.
It’s funny. I enjoyed working there and I thought the food was decent, but I don’t recall ever eating at a Red Barn after 1970.
It’s kind of a shame it’s gone.
It was definitely better than Burger Chef … or Sambo’s.