midlifebear
Expert Member
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2007
- Posts
- 5,789
- Media
- 0
- Likes
- 179
- Points
- 133
- Location
- Nevada, Buenos Aires, and Barçelona
- Sexuality
- 60% Gay, 40% Straight
- Gender
- Male
Speaking of having good memories, I vividly remember my mother and father taking me and my older brother to the Coon Chicken Inn on Highland Drive in early 1950's Salt Lake City every Sunday. The entrance to the restaurant was a caricature of a giant, wild-eyed black-face (as in minstrel) negro whose giant open grinning mouth served as the front door. You walked through this giant gaping mouth, were greeted by waitresses dressed as "mammies" and ordered the fried chicken. The same caricature was used on all of the dishes, cups, saucers, bowls, and platters and can still be found in antique stores in the Land O' the Saints. To their credit, the owners hired both African American and white waitresses. But the place was a veritable Aunt Jamima Land with "pies to go."
I really don't think my parents thought of themselves as racist at the time. But by 1955 the place hand been renovated and called Nalgren's, an all you could eat buffet (still owned by the same family). Instead of overt racist imagery, they replaced the negro caricature with a giant sign showing a family of skinny people walking in one side of the entrance and the same family suddenly round and obese walking out of the other side of the door -- thus becoming an equal-opportunity offensive establishment. The restaurant still exists in yet another reincarnation (owned by relatives of the original Coon Chicken Inn folks) and is now called The Hunger-Orama or something equally dismal, in the exact same place on Highland Drive. (LPSG-ers trapped in the Land of Zion, please feel free to correct me on the new name.)
Adding insult to injury, the food isn't even remotely good. It's a far cry in quality from Luby's (originally Luby's Cafeteria) in San Antonio (and now all over Texas) where until the early 1970's African American employees only held dish washing, busing, and janitorial jobs while the cashiers, waiting staff and the women behind the buffet were all white.
As for Obama, I'm looking forward to the day he is invited to golf at any one of the still racially segregated private country clubs in the south or in Westchester County, New York.
"Sweet or unsweet?"
I really don't think my parents thought of themselves as racist at the time. But by 1955 the place hand been renovated and called Nalgren's, an all you could eat buffet (still owned by the same family). Instead of overt racist imagery, they replaced the negro caricature with a giant sign showing a family of skinny people walking in one side of the entrance and the same family suddenly round and obese walking out of the other side of the door -- thus becoming an equal-opportunity offensive establishment. The restaurant still exists in yet another reincarnation (owned by relatives of the original Coon Chicken Inn folks) and is now called The Hunger-Orama or something equally dismal, in the exact same place on Highland Drive. (LPSG-ers trapped in the Land of Zion, please feel free to correct me on the new name.)
Adding insult to injury, the food isn't even remotely good. It's a far cry in quality from Luby's (originally Luby's Cafeteria) in San Antonio (and now all over Texas) where until the early 1970's African American employees only held dish washing, busing, and janitorial jobs while the cashiers, waiting staff and the women behind the buffet were all white.
As for Obama, I'm looking forward to the day he is invited to golf at any one of the still racially segregated private country clubs in the south or in Westchester County, New York.
"Sweet or unsweet?"
Last edited:
