200921 September 21, 2020

Me with Mullin's Cafe in background

    I found it odd when I started putting the list together that Mullin’s had slipped to #5 on my Top 10 list, but it did. There are multiple reasons why it is in my Top 10, but the main two are people and food. I am sure I went there many times before I started school at Lee Junior High, but my enrollment in the school sealed the deal for me.

    Mullin’s became a favorite after-school stop once I got my driver’s license and my 1953 Ford. At that age, and with hormones running wild, it was not the food that attracted me, but the female company which accompanied me. Quite often I had a carful of girls which went with me to grab a bite when school was over. I was never serious about any of them, nor them of me, but it was an ego thing to be seen with a bunch of pretty girls hanging out with me. Usually, after school we ate inside and did not take advantage of their drive up service.

    Now Mullin’s wasn’t like Arnolds in “Happy Days” when it came to being a teenage hangout. They had a jukebox there which gobbled up much of my pocket change, but there was no dancing  to the music. We just drank Cokes, ate hamburgers, and listened to the music, but when I look back on those days, that was good, clean, fun.

    In 1949, about the time some of us started to eat real food, Mullin’s Drive-In opened at its new location at the corner of 5th Street (Andrew Jackson Way) and Stevens Avenue. Though it is reported that the owner, Larry Mullins, remembered selling hamburgers 12 for one dollar, by the time we started buying our own, the price was 10 cents each. That was for bun, meat, mustard, pickle, and onions. The price also included as much grease as the top of the bun could soak up, if requested. Mullins offered curb service and many of our generation, both males and females, were destined to work there as car hops. Drive-in service was offered on the side street, and parking often spilled onto adjacent yards. The place was located so close to a residential neighborhood that customers were instructed not to blow their horns for service, but were requested to blink their lights instead.  The car hops came out and took the orders and when they brought them back they attached a metal tray to your open window. When you were finished eating, you blinked your lights and the carhops would return to get your tray. Often I would be there at 10 p.m. when they closed and would pick them up and off we would go cruising until way past the time when we should be home in bed.

    It never dawned on me that I should have tried to get a job there myself. My unreliable transportation prevented me from being able to do a lot of things I should have done, but I know I could have worked there if I had tried. My bad.

    I found it strange when I started looking for a photo of the store when I was working on my Baby Boomer book that no one seemed to have one. I finally found a shot of it in the background in a picture of me taken in front of Bob Walker’s house. Although they moved to a new location and still served the same food, it never seemed to have the same nostalgic power for me as the old location. Still, it was an important establishment for me in my youth.