BOOMER by Tim Engel (smallest ebook reader txt) 📕

became our mother!! She was also beautiful. She had long, dark brown hair and brown eyes and was medium height and had a beautiful figure. Since Dad was built like Captain America and Mom was beautiful so you can figure there were times when Dad was gonna have to open a can o’ whup a** on some unsuspecting dufus who had drink a few too many shots of liquid bravery. One time Mom told me that she and Dad were at the Pike in Long Beach and they were having a good time. Some idiot liked what he saw and decided to pinch her. Well, rather than start a big fight, Mom didn’t say a word. If she had, Dad probably would have floored the guy. This made me feel bad for Mom. I wanted to defend her. I wanted to track down that so and so and give him a thing or two!
I remember we had a simple contest once to see who could hold their hand out in front of them the longest. I think I lasted a couple minutes, Tom lasted three, and Dad lasted four…but Mom vanquished all of us. She lasted 10 minutes! This absolutely blew my mind. I was certain Tom or Dad would win the big hold your hand straight out in front of you contest. They were athletes. They were tough. They worked out! But Mom was the endurance athlete! Another time we were testing to see who was most flexible. Who could touch their toes? Well, I could get past my knees! Down around my ankles. Tom could reach close to his toes as could Dad. But Mom; she did it again! She could touch her palms on the floor! HUH? Did I get that right? Yep – she sure could! I had never seen Mom doing yoga, or pilates; in fact, in these days I had yet to hear of these exotic workouts. But Mom was showing us how it was done! And her father Kevin could do the same thing. He had been quite an athlete as well and played golf daily until the day that he had a debilitating stroke.
I would find out much later that Mom was quite an athlete. In fact, we later found a photo clipped from the local newspaper. It showed a group of women playing volleyball at Simon Bolivar park. The caption read something like: “local women enjoy a game of volleyball at Simon Bolivar Park ‘mixer’”. In the picture is an obviously athletic woman up in the air having just spiked the ball over the net. Can you guess who that woman was? Yep – that’s right – our Mom!! But she never went on and on about her athleticism and she also took her role as Mother and Wife as the key focus and spent the most time on these. And understanding and enjoying these roles. Oh, there were the times to go back to Iceland to Ice Skate in Paramount. This was and still is a famous place to ice skate in Southern California.
So we all climbed into our ’59 Chevrolet Impala and embarked for Bob’s Big Boy. The ’59 Chevy is an American Classic. In that day we didn’t understand that this would one day be a ‘classic’. We just knew that it was a very cool car. Sexy fins which were unique for this year. Fins in this era were a mainstay; but the fins on the ’59 were fins on steroids. But to keep from being ostentatious – they were flat and sleek like beautiful ears on a pedigree dog…

The family went shopping for this car together. We had the ’50 Merc which was a great car (and another future classic!). It was a good car, but it was 10 years later and it was time to look for another car. We were all there together, Mom, Tom, Dad , and I. We looked at a few cars. But when we found the ’59 Chevy Tom and I began to drool! This car was very sexy. Yellow, a V8, fins, rear stereo speaker with very cool crossed racing flags. And the dash wasn’t like the plastic and leather stuff you see now days (albeit much safer…). This think had a formed steel dash with chrome! Tom and I both oohed and aahhed our way around the car. We climbed in, over, around, and through. And under the hood and in the trunk of course. And that trunk certainly had space enough for a couple of Sting ray bikes!!

Sting ray bikes, you say? Yes, sting ray bikes. But that’s another story. “Let’s get this one!” Tom said to Dad. Dad said “you think so?” with a big grin. I said “yeah, Dad, let’s get this one!” Mom nodded in approval and it was a done deal.
Bob’s Big Boy was located on the corner of South and Lakewood.

We lived near Del Amo and Lakewood – so it was a short drive – maybe 4 miles away. We piled into the sexy yellow ’59 Impala, Dad pumped the pedal a couple times, turned the key, and the 4 barrell carburetor helped the V8 to purr to life. Oh, and we had to have the glass packs. These were special exhaust with fiberglass that helped the car sound deep and throaty. The old school version of the turbo max. We pulled out on to Del Amo and turned left on Lakewood and cruised up the street. It was getting dark and the neon sign of L’s restaurant at the corner of Del Amo and Lakewood lit up the night. L’s was actually a pretty good restaurant as well…but how could you beat Bob’s?
I think the girl who took our order already knew what we wanted…we didn’t change very often. The Bob’s Big Boy Burger, fries, and the silver goblet shake. As she walked away, I couldn’t help notice her big hair. It appeared to be a condition of employment @ Bob’s – gotta have some extra hair up on top…a bun, a fall, a French roll – you name it. The order was placed on the stainless steel merry go round and we knew it wouldn’t be long. When the meal comes we relish at the relish…some kind of red relish on the burger…then they have the seasonling salt on the table which goes over well on the burgers. Oh, and some ketchup…and some ketchup on the fries. Very tasty. Not the most nutritious meal in the world – no salad within a mile…but very good to an 8 year old in in 1962 Lakewood , CA.
And the silver goblet shake – how tasty is that?! With the silver goblet making it look sexy to boot! I mean even if what was inside wasn’t thick, creamy, sweet, vanilla or chocolate or strawberry, it was so cool looking that you had to have one!! Was it chrome plated or polished staqinless? Who Knows? Perhaps Dad did. After all, he built airplanes! Dc-7’s, DC-8’s, DC-9’s… And more importantly we were all there together. A family unit! :^) The Engels were at Bob’s for a meal. For those unfamiliar with Bob’s – it was named after the mascot – the little fellow who stood out front wearing red and white plaid overalls holding a plate proudly in the air with a burger placed just so. You could buy the mascot as a bank. The “Bob” was so popular that indeed, you could buy all kinds of cool stuff with his namesake and visage so that you could take a bit of the BBB experience home with you.
It wasn’t until later that I realized that although there was some protein, carbs, and fats here – that this was probably not the best of meals. I mean, the fat, salt, and carbs were probably sky high. Probably enough for a couple of days. And far from balanced. And there was certainly no greens, salad, vegetables or the like. But all we knew was it tasted terrific. And it wouldn’t be until much later that I saw that perhaps French fries were maybe best consumer perhaps once or twice a month instead of 5 or 6 times a month. They also had mile-high strawberry pie. And advertised on local TV so that you really couldn’t resist.
Now – I haven’t been able to verify it, but I think Johnny Cash was singing songs for Bob’s. It went something like this…”At Bob’s Big Boy, we love good food just like you doooooooo.” All these decades later, my brother Tom can do a proud rendition of this song. In fact, I think he sings it better than Johnny himself.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but BBB pretty much disappeared some years ago. No one knew what happened. It seemed that there was a move to fast food like McDonald’s, Jack in the Box, and Taco Bell. Bob’s fell on hard times and started to vanish like drops of rain in the hot sun. We weren’t happy about this. But patience is a virtue. We are now seeing a resurgence. There’s one on Signal Hill on Willow just West of Cherry and there are some springing up in the local desert communities. For this we are very grateful. We like the BBB. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Burgers are very close to the original… infact, I doubt you could tell the difference.
After dinner we decided to go for a drive. We piled into the Impala, fired up the glass packs, and headed up Lakewood Blvd toward the beach. We figured we’d go down near the beach and maybe take a walk on the pier. That was just the thing to cap a great night spent together as a family.
LAKEWOOD
As a child I had no idea how fortunate we were to live in Lakewood. Later I would find out that it sprang up over night. Pretty much built in 1950/51 as a place to accommodate thousands of veterans returning from World War II. Dad had fought in the Pacific on a destroyer.
As referenced on the Los Angeles Public Library Website: “ Lakewood is a city ten miles southeast of Los Angeles that in 1950 broke new ground-literally and figuratively-when the Lakewood Park Company started building what would become the nation's first post-war planned housing development, consisting of 17,500 houses on about 3,500 acres. Lakewood emerged from a former sugar beet field to become a model planned community, complete with street lighting and underground wires, assembly-line construction of about 50 houses a day, berms between residential streets and the highway, and a car-friendly prototype shopping area called Lakewood Center. The community's size also eclipsed that of many long-established cities such as Holyoke, Massachusetts, and Santa Ana, California. Promoted with slogans such as "Lakewood-My Home Town" and "Lakewood, Tomorrow's City Today," the community was built just in time for war veterans and their families to buy their first homes with the help of