Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Memories by Bev Jackson Cotter

I was 16 that summer and a carhop at the A&W Root Beer stand on South Broadway in Albert Lea.

Every night the other carhops and I walked miles back and forth between the little square orange building and the lot filled with cars — noisy teenagers who had been cruising Broadway, young families ordering nickel root beers for Mom and Dad and small-sized free ones for the children playing in the back seat, an occasional bachelor passing time and older folks out for a drive that would cool them before they returned to their un-air-conditioned homes.

Prices were reasonable. Root beer for 5 or 10 cents, a root beer float 15 cents, hamburger 20 cents and a vegetable hamburger for 25. Candy bars were a nickel.

The parking lot was divided with imaginary lines so each carhop had her own designated area, and in between times we sat on stools in front of the root beer stand.

Louis Schuller, the owner and manager, spent his time keeping an eye on everything that was going on, preparing trays, washing mugs in the metal sink, rinsing them and then storing them in a divided section with cold water — waiting for the next order. The carhops all wore little orange aprons with pockets for change. We started the evening with 75 cents (If I remember right), and as we picked up an order, we paid Mr. Schuller for it then collected from the customer. At the end of the evening, we would turn in the change we had started with. We made 45 cents an hour, and if we were lucky maybe a quarter in tips for the evening.

We carried the order out to the car on a metal tray with a rubber mat, asked the driver to roll his window up three inches so we could hook the trays over them, and then adjusted the vertical support on the door. We received our payment and then back to the stool, waiting for the next customer to pull into our designated area.

Mr. Schuller could whistle. The tunes were so clear, and we all enjoyed listening to his melodies, except on Saturday nights. That was when everyone’s car radio was tuned to the Hit Parade. The top 20 hits of the week were played from 11 p.m. to midnight, and the entire parking lot was filled with the sounds. I’ll never forget the words to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

Occasionally, Mr. Schuller’s mother would spend an evening with us. She always lit a smudge pot of dried leaves and the smelly smoke would waft across the front of the root beer stand, burning our eyes but not deterring the mosquitoes at all. Our 6-12 lotion protected us from them.

Mugsy (Margaret) was Mr. Schuller’s assistant. She fried hamburgers and served root beer when needed. We all thought she was Mr. Schuller’s girlfriend, but they never gave any indication of romance. Our teenage imaginations simply decided it was so.

That 16th summer was great. It was a time of 35-cent movie tickets for Hollywood extravaganzas, starched can-cans, white bucks, guys with ducktail haircuts, nickel cokes and big cars powered by gasoline at 25.9 cents a gallon. Television was new, but our entertainment came from days at the beach, our imaginations and where ever our legs could carry us.

The root beer stand job took us into a broader world. It was a wonderful time to be young.

Bev Jackson Cotter is an Albert Lea resident.