by fuzzfactor | 2025-11-22 18:33:16+00:00
When I was a boy quite a few decades ago, McDonald's finally came to Tampa.

Burger King already had a few locations in other towns after getting started in Miami, and they were a bit like after-school soda shops of the 1950's that Northerners were more accustomed to. Which most people don't realize had not existed up until then in Florida because of the very small fraction of students and young people in general compared to all other states.

There were no Whoppers yet or fancy logo but they did have an overhead sign with a jolly fat king sitting on a burger with lettuce and tomato. Which you got for 10 cents. Burger King was just trying to become a chain. A major attraction at the time was of course the air-conditioning, which was seldom seen outside of banks and supermarkets at this early time. The meat was not as small as the major chain at the time, Royal Castle, which had locations up the East Coast. Royal Castle was very much like the Krystal mini-burgers from the Northeast, they were 9 cents in Florida and most kids would have no less than 2 or 3. These were small tiled breakfast/lunch/"dinner" grills that served any of their fare around-the-clock. The one in our neighborhood even had a jukebox like we figured was real common up North.

Most tourists from the Northeast never took the Turnpike or even considered passing through Orlando before Disney World was built, so they all came down US-1, and it was dotted with Royal Castles all the way to Miami, people would stop in any time on a long drive for coffee, on the door it said "open 29 hours a day". This was when 7-11 was only open from 7am to 11pm (not Sunday though) and nothing else had shopping hours that late. Gas stations closed Sundays and at night too, and self-service pumping was still not the least bit primed for consideration since the arrival of the automobile. When I was about 10 I kind of figured that the Royal Castles had only been there about 10 years themselves, without threat of a hurricane up until that time, when one was on the way they had to scramble to put locks on the doors because they had never closed before.

Anyway, people knew McDonalds was going to be a California-style approach and it was not near downtown, not far but on then-undeveloped property and you could see it as they built the characteristic golden arches. Big tiles too, not the small ones. They were proud of their growth and often updated their signs with the increasing number of hamburgers sold, striving for their first million.

When they opened of course they had the longest french fries anybody had ever seen. Sticking way out of the smallest little paper sack that looked so absurd it actually got people's attention. No large orders of fries, and Big Macs were not even a dream, nothing but regular hamburgers in the white wrapper for 12 cents, cheeseburgers in the yellow wrapper for 15 cents, fries and Cokes for 10 cents, shakes 13 or 14 cents, slightly more than a burger. Grilled with onions, plus mustard, ketchup, and pickles on every one assembly-line style, and not nearly as small as the mini-burgers, but they were always ready when you got there, and nobody had realistically thought about drive-through yet.