Thank you so much to Nancy McKeon Olson, a college friend, for sending me a link to a fab article in the Tennessean newspaper.
It was about my favorite thing in the world, teeny Krystal hamburgers. I've blogged about them before, even put a recipe in here for them, but I can't stop thinking about them no matter how much I've posted. They are addictive little things, and associated with major life events for most Southerners. Everyone has a story about Krystal burgers. There's even a Krystal Hall of Fame that you can join if you have an interesting life story that involves Krystal.
Whenever I've had a life drama and been living in the South, I've had to have a Krystal. When my grandmother had a stroke and was dying, my friend Brenda picked me up from the hospital and drove me to get a 'grief Krystal.' She was playing Paul McCartney in her car, and I never forgot the afternoon.
Here's an excerpt from the article that brought back so many memories for me. Thanks Nancy for sending it to me.
Krystal has a late-night reputation, to be sure. But for locals, the fast-food chain is more than a pit stop after last call. Since its square mini-burgers first hit the griddle in 1932, they've been leaving up-sized servings of nostalgia with the bouts of indigestion.
"They were good little rascals," said 92-year-old Margaret Shutt, who remembers having 5-cent Krystals in the late 1930s as a Peabody College student. These days she doesn't indulge (meals are provided at her assisted living center in Fayetteville), but recollections remain.
"That fit very nicely into our budget, filled our tummies, and we enjoyed them," she said.
See this article in the Nashville paper for the whole story:
Almost every Southerner has a Krystal story
3 comments:
I have a Krystal story! I need to post on that site, but for now, yours will do...I was nearly 10 months pregnant with Baby Darlin' and just about to pop, so how I could have been HONGRY I don't know, as she was taking up all the room in my thorax and then some.
Anyway, my husband had bought a baby-blue Mazda 626 and we had to go over to Jackson from Vicksburg to turn in our old car and pick up the new one. As I was so long overdue to deliver, I'd given up thinking the baby would ever arrive, so I rode over with him to do the car deal.
After which, we were starving, and what to our wondering eyes should appear but the KRYSTAL right there on Capitol Street. We loaded up with a big sack of 'em, two orders of those steamy greasy salty fries, and large icy Dr. Peppers. I ate until my already-occupied tum-tum could hold no more, and snoozed off as we rode into the sunset, homewards on I-20.
Midway there,I awoke with sharp regular pains. "Uh-oh," I thought..."too many little burgers!" Then I remembered, DUH, I'm overdue to deliver a baby!
Which is exactly what I did later that night. She's lucky I didn't name her Krystal Mazda.
That's a good Krystal story. I don't know if it's good enough to get you in the Krystal Hall of Fame though. Thanks for writing it for us.
Brenda! Katie just sent me a link to the Tennessean and they mention this post in their article. Will have to post it! Yay!
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