Midcentury North American Restaurant Placemats
Posted4 months agoActive3 months ago
casualarchivist.substack.comOtherstoryHigh profile
calmpositive
Debate
10/100
Vintage CultureRestaurant MemorabiliaMidcentury Design
Key topics
Vintage Culture
Restaurant Memorabilia
Midcentury Design
A collection of midcentury North American restaurant placemats has been shared, sparking nostalgia and discussion about the design and cultural significance of these artifacts.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
2d
Peak period
31
42-48h
Avg / period
7.1
Comment distribution57 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 57 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 16, 2025 at 1:52 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 18, 2025 at 8:56 AM EDT
2d after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
31 comments in 42-48h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 20, 2025 at 6:44 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45265487Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 4:50:34 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
Guess it's time to go back.
Which is what Internet Archive has as their latest scrape too.
The previous scrape worked: https://web.archive.org/web/20250906155345/https://www.roads...
https://robertson.nsw.au/bigpotato.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tex
Also the Alamo (as in "Remember The") still exists. It's now a museum in downtown San Antonio.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_Mission
Each focuses on a specific highway and list motel and diner stops.
[1] Example: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
I should have it done and posted to archive.org this Fall sometime.
My wife is the creator in the relationship, making a variety of apparel and decorative things for the home. She takes a huge amount of inspiration in her designs from Midcentury stuff like this, so she'll be thrilled when I share this with her.
What is odd about this state of affairs is that everyone wants Mom and Pop, family owned, unique diners, however, where do people go when the kids in the back want their Happy Meals? You always know what you are going to get in a chain, and that is the magic of franchising.
Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that is a thing in America.
Call it a comment on capitalism or what you will.
Due to the decline of the High Street, there are always independent cafes, sandwich shops and coffee shops that come and go. These take advantage of the spots that used to be where decent shops that used to be. However, few of them have enough customers to last more than a year or two.
On the surface there is more choice than ever. However, the best bakery in town closed down as they couldn't balance the books any more. There also used to be several fish and chips shops and they went too, although it has to be said that there are no longer any fish in British waters, so that is no surprise.
Retail is always in flux, however, the place is turning into a veritable 'food desert' with a choice between junk food slop and pretentious gentrified expense, with no middle ground.
America is different because you do get places in the sparsely populated West where passing trade will support a diner, gas station and general store but not a gaggle of franchised chains. If the interstate comes to town though, you know that will change.
Whenever I'm in there, it seems busy. Part of the USP is that it's open 24/7 (something increasingly rare)...
The rent is likely set assuming deep pocketed chains will be the only tenants. No surprise when they end up as the only tenants.
It's just meant there isn't a coffee shop at the train station for six months. Greggs doesn't want to open a third branch there sadly.
"The restaurant was originally named Johnny Reb's Chick-Chuck-'N'-Shake, and was sold in 1966 to A. T. Davis, Tubby's brother, who became a franchisee of Col. Harlan Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken."
http://www.highwayhost.org/DavisBros/davisbros1.htm
https://mistercola.com/products/vintage-placemat-davis-broth...
Where ever the parent decides to go.
I agree this is one main way McDonalds won, and others like it. Yet I feel as of late, the last 5 to 10 years or so, this is gone. I see terrible service in McDonalds. A lack of cleanliness where I'd never see it before. I feel that those policing franchises have just stopped, or don't fine as much.
I used to eat there when traveling a lot, but not so much now. And I used to eat there from time to time locally, but never bother now. The food is just too inconsistent.
And that's very bizarre, and sad, and while McDonalds has seen a drop in sales due to price hikes, I think this is part of it too.
In the 80s where I worked, we had a large project to enhance the systems to our plant in Ireland. So for a couple of months a team from Ireland came here to the US to work with us.
The question "How do you want your eggs" at a breakfast place confused them to no end. Seems at the time in Ireland, eggs only were cooked one way, kind of like pouched. I do not know if that is now still true.
Incredibly hard to find real documentation on how short-order cooks work, but the best resource I've found (though brief) is Fast Foods and Short Order Cooking, by Pepper, Pratt and Winnick (1984). I've been dreaming about writing a manual for years, but I'd have to find some shifu to teach me. I was a grill cook (as a young person), but never had to handle the entire thing.
He son eventually took over and developed that skill quite well.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/09/05/the-egg-men
https://ahundredyearsago.com/2021/10/17/old-fashioned-jelly-...
EDIT: a postcard from the Ranch House: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:x920...
Last year I started publishing full page ads from the collection, I've got about 1000 online (https://adretro.com).
Or of course, they just liked it like that.
It was collected by a private collector in New York then recently sold to the university of Toronto. I first heard about it it maybe a decade ago and have been waiting for a coffee table book since.
I would also be interested in recipes to go with the historic menus. For example dishes with sweet and sour have changed a lot from more liquid and vinagery to the goopy sweet mess we get now.
However, my favorite by far, is the Greenville Lodge! Such a pretty looking graphic but if you look closely at the address/location information you see "Opposite Du Pont Plant"! That's fantastically mid-century to me. It's like a subtle joke you would've seen on Mad Men.
My first impression from that mat was that it was AI generated hah