Back when I was growing up, if Mama said, “Let’s go out to eat,” we did not head for the car. We weren’t going anywhere. She literally meant out…as in outside…as in not in the house.
I could count on my digits the number of times my family went out to a restaurant. I could probably do so without needing to take off my shoes! That was true for two reasons: One was because back then, in my small hometown of Rainsville, there was hardly anywhere to go out to eat. There are all kinds of restaurants and fast food places there now, but only a couple of locally owned places back then. The other reason was because it cost money and we had more home-grown food than we had money!
When Mama said, “Let’s go out to eat,” she meant out on the front porch or out under the shade trees. We often did that in the cool-of-the-day for dinner (or supper, as it was known in the South back then). Because we didn’t have air conditioning, it was often cooler outside than inside the house. On special occasions, we even cooked out there on our portable aluminum charcoal grill. Mama liked that because it didn’t heat up the house like the oven did.
On those rare occasions when we did go out to a restaurant, it was King’s. We Kings went to the other King’s restaurant, but they were not kin to us. Actually, my set of Kings had their own little café, complete with a couple of bowling lanes, right there in Rainsville. I don’t remember that because I had not surprised them with my presence yet. By the time I arrived, they had gotten out of that business. Maybe the memory of running a café was another reason they didn’t want to eat out.
The other King’s place started out as a drive-up dairy bar. We didn’t have a Dairy Queen in Rainsville, but we had a Dari-King. They had great hamburgers and milkshakes, but they didn’t have inside seating. It became a hangout for local teenagers. We cruised, but mostly in circles around the Dari-King building. Maybe to stop our cruising they blocked our path by adding a sit-down restaurant to the building. The Dari-King was transformed into King’s Restaurant. They still had those hamburgers, but they also had full meals, including wonderful broasted chicken and salad. When I became old enough to drive, and was making my own money, I ate there quite often.
Before long other cafés began to open up. We had Bud’s Ranch House, The Greek Gardens and eventually Betty’s BBQ. Then we discovered if we ventured way on out of town there was another place between Rainsville and Fort Payne called Pine Ridge Café. It must have been a full 5 miles from my house. It sat right on the side of Highway 35, and looked like it might tumble off in the ditch behind it. They cooked a mean country breakfast plus scrumptious hamburger steaks and fried chicken livers at lunch and dinner.
It saddens me to say that all those places now exist only in my mind. As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end…well, that is, except heaven. A Sonic now sits where the Dari-King once reigned.
These days, I live in Opelika/Auburn and we have so many places to eat that I couldn’t even name them all. My favorite place of them all is under our own roof. We have wonderful home-cooked meals and a big back porch…if we want to go out to eat!
Bill King can be reached at bkpreach@yahoo.com or 334-728-5514 (office).
