A Tire Town Burger Love Story

Happy Labor Day 2024! I’m not positive that we are supposed to wish each other a Happy Labor Day but what the heck, what can it hurt? According to my research Labor Day was established in 1882. I’m guessing that the idea of giving workers a day off in 1882 took some convincing by the leaders of the day. I’m also curious if they took the day off and had a picnic and put some burgers on the grill. Which raised yet another question, who invented the hamburger?

Again, according to my research (I want you to know that I did extensive Wikipedia research that took minutes to perform), the first hamburg sandwich in the U.S. was traced to Frank and Charles Menches in 1885 in Canton, Ohio. September 18, 1885, at the Erie County Fair to be exact. The invention was thought to be a byproduct of the immigration of people from Europe (Hamburg, Germany?) to the U.S. and the industrial revolution that made grinding meat into patties much easier with the development of the meat grinder. This allowed more working-class folks to be able to afford meat in their diets. So, it is possible that the newly introduced Labor Day festivities may have included hamburgers, especially in my old stomping grounds of northeast Ohio.

Many other cities around that time try and stake claim to inventing the hamburger and I have no idea how anyone can lay claim to that but since I was born and raised in northeast Ohio, the Menches brother get my vote and as we know, that is all that really matters in this blog anyway.

It sort of reminds me of cities that claim to be the “most haunted.” And for $50 they will drive you around their fair city at night and tell you scary stories as they go past a cemetery. For an extra $10 they will have Crack Head Larry hide in the bushes and yell “BOO!” when you come by at just the right time. But I digress.

The story I read states that the aforementioned Menches brothers were at the Erie County Fair and ran out of the pork products they were selling and, in a panic, looked around and discovered that they had some ground meat and decided to put it on the grill and slapped it between a couple pieces of bread and Yahtzee, the hamburger was born. A little more digging and I found out that quick service food followed several years later as White Castle opened in the 1920’s and McDonalds in the 1940’s.

When I was growing up in Akron, Ohio (“Tire Town”), we had a LOT of great hamburger restaurants as my memory serves. I was fortunate that my dad loved those places, and we could just be driving around and the next thing you know, we are parked in front of one of them. We would roll up in the family truckster and place our order and they would bring it right out to the car. Dad will specifically warn ME not to spill anything on the car seats just seconds before dumping my Coke or the ketchup. I know that this memory will not mean much to those that read this unless you grew up in Tire Town, but I remember so many back then. Some remain but many do not. There was Swensons, Sky Way, the Corral, PoGo’s, Spotless Spot, The Bun, Louies in North Hill, the Circle, Dilly’s, and many more I’m sure I missed. We rarely went to a national chain because they could not stand up to the local haunts.

My favorite was a little stand on East Market Street that went by the name “Thacker’s.” Mr. Marvin “Pop” Thacker opened this oasis of heavenly goodness in 1920 (sound familiar?). It was originally called “Peppy Service Lunch” until they changed the name for good to Thacker’s. They served a small hamburger (think today’s sliders) that only came one way, onions, pickle and mustard with a toothpick to hold it together. This flat grill was in front of a picture window and I don’t believe they ever closed during the hay days of the tire factories. They had some seats at the counter and a few tables but that was it. This cathedral of happiness stayed open for 60 years closing in 1980. The building was right next to the Goodyear World Headquarters and Plants 1 and 2 (before they moved to Seiberling Street) and couldn’t have been more than 1,000 square feet. I remember it being packed 24/7 and when I was a kid, they cost $.025 a piece (They were $0.05 when they opened). If you remember the “Cheesebugga, Cheesbugga” skit on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s, this HAD to be the place they were trying to recreate. “No Coke…Pepsi”. If you look up Greasy Spoon in the dictionary you will find a picture of this place and it is well-deserved.

The secret to this place was said to be the “secret grease” that was used, and Pop was the only one who knew the recipe. Similar to the famous Coke formula, it was well-protected. The reason they didn’t serve ketchup was that it did not go well with the grease and made the hamburgers taste different. So not until the 1970s did they even have ketchup at the stand. Their marketing slogan was “Buy a Sack Full.” When you did, they put them in a plain brown lunch bag and the trick was getting home before the grease went through the bottom of the sack.

There was a man that worked in the restaurant for decades that took over once Pop died and started a restaurant called “Hamburger Station.” This fella always dressed in a cowboy hat and the new restaurants had a cowboy theme complete with a huge horse statue out front. The inside had saddles and cowboy motif. They opened in 1975 and are still in business today. He claims that he is the only person that knows the grease recipe and he will never tell anyone else (I guess Pop did tell somebody else the recipe). They tried to do an expansion, but it never grew to the number of stores they were originally shooting for. I think they are down to two or three as of 2024. The menu has expanded a great deal, and you can get ketchup (but I NEVER do!).

Today’s story will be a Tire Town Burger Love Story that I remember from when I was a young lad and how my dad introduced me to his world of Akron burger joints.

But First…A Joke:

A proctologist is walking around the office with a rectal thermometer tucked behind his ear. He goes into a staff meeting to discuss the day’s activities, and a coworker asks why he has a thermometer behind his ear. In a wild motion he grabs for the thermometer, looks at it, and shouts, “Then where did I put my pen?”

Bonus Dad Joke:

I dreamed about drowning in an ocean of orange soda last night. It took me a while to realize it was just a Fanta sea.

A Verse to Contemplate:

I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering - Isaiah 48:10 (NLT)

Have I Told You This One?

We didn’t have a ton of money when I was growing up, but I didn’t realize it since everybody I grew up with was pretty much the same in East Akron. Most everyone I knew had parents and relatives working in the tire factories or some related business. I say that to say we didn’t have a lot of money for “extra” things.

One day dad comes home from work and at dinner lets me know that he won a one-year membership to the YMCA downtown from work, and he was giving it to me. I was about 10 or so and was going to learn how to swim and could also play basketball a few times a week. I was super pumped! This was so unexpected. One of his buddies won one too, so he would be taking turns driving us downtown to the YMCA. This was a big deal to me. The YMCA building was this cool art-deco style building with a big pool and gymnasium on the lower floors and rooms and such on the upper floors.

I’m all excited for the first time and dad drives me and a friend to our lessons. The first part of the day was basketball lessons and then swimming. We go into the locker room and change into our gym clothes and head out onto the basketball court. I’m out there jicking around when a coach blows his whistle for us to gather around. He has these younger guys (probably high school age) gather about 6 or 7 of us into group and starts to teach us the finer points of basketball. I’m my typical spastic self and can’t stand still when he starts to dribble the ball and asks our group if anyone can steal the ball from him. Challenge accepted! I sneak around behind him and when he turns my way…BAM, there goes my nose. I wasn’t there 30 minutes, and I break my nose and I’m bleeding all over the gym floor. They give me a towel and back into the locker room I go. They give me a bag of ice and call Big Wayne to come and get me. Dad shows up and can’t believe I am already banged up. I can tell he is kind of upset but he is also concerned about me. Dads back then were not really good at being huggers if you catch my drift. My debut at the YMCA doesn’t go anywhere like I had hoped, and I get dressed back into my street clothes. On the way home the car is very quiet, and dad can tell I’m really upset.

As we are driving past Goodyear he pulls into Thacker’s and tries to make my day better by looking at me and saying, “stay here, I’ll go get a sack of burgers.” He comes back and we make it home before the bottom of the bag dissolves and he saved the day. Dad didn’t always have to give me a hug to let me know he loved me, sometimes Thacker’s would do the trick.

After I moved away from Akron in my mid 20’s it was always a treat to come back home and eat at some of my favorite places (Still Is!!). A favorite for dad and me was for me to grab a sack of Hamburger Station burgers and their onion rings and have a little midnight snack on the deck. Trying to hide it from others was futile since the onions could be smelled from Columbus.

After dad passed it felt weird to not have our little get together over a few burgers and rings. But I’ll always remember the day that those Thacker burgers made my nose feel a whole lot better!

A Prayer:

Heavenly Father, I rest in Your peaceful presence and trust in You to calm the cares of my heart. Teach me to discern how Your peace can lead me to Your ways.

Book Recommendation:

The Little Red Book of Wisdom by Mark DeMoss (2007)

Music Recommendation:

External Combustion by Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs (2022)

Quote of the Day:

“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” – Oscar Wilde