CHARLESTON, S.C., 1973—

I met my first stepmother at a Shoney’s Big Boy.

The official LLC was probably just Shoney’s, but you can’t be putting a chubby fellow in red-and-white checkerboard overalls with a pompadour that could shame Elvis, holding up a double cheeseburger Lady Liberty style out front—and not expect him to get top billing in everyone’s head.

You introduce your five-year-old to a pretty strawberry blonde in a booth there, and you’ve landed an above-the-fold headline for life.

Does not everyone see their life laid out newspaper style? There might be a clinical term for it, but I’m good.

There’s the Obituaries (no life is complete without one), Weather, Arts & Culture, and you always have Front Page News.

That’s where you would have found the Shoney’s Big Boy meeting, the one where I was introduced to my stepmother and told her a joke. My well-rehearsed riddle involved an elephant and an iron. You might know it.

Oh, how I loved Shoney’s newspaper of a kid’s menu with short stories, coloring pages and games.

Lick your finger—to gross out my sister—and turn the page.

After the introduction heard around the world, Ang and I played mini-golf with her kids. The four of us took our best shots amid the honks and exhaust of Savannah Highway, the West Ashley thoroughfare in Charleston.

The unbranded putt-putt course was right next to Shoney’s Big Boy, with a drive-in movie theater behind them both. That’s the layout in my childmind anyway.

Ohhh, the good old days before the Savannah Highway Auto Mile.

But let’s not begrudge progress. Business & Real Estate news need column space too.

Our next-door neighbor in the Ponderosa built his American Dream on the humble origins of the Auto Mile. He ran the Pontiac dealership not too far from Shoney’s. With that kind of upwardly mobile career path on wheels, he and his wife didn’t stay in the ’Rosa very long.

We visited our old neighbors once after they moved to a new neighborhood called Snee Farm. It was maybe the longest ride of my life. I remember thinking, Why would you ever want to live so far away—in the middle of nowhere—in Mount Pleasant?

Our old neighbors sent me and my sister into their new backyard to explore… and, well, the golf course was just right there. We were probably seven and eleven.

The sign on the ball washer made us snicker. Naturally, I had to make overflowing bubbles by cranking the handle like an old-fashioned movie camera.

This was apparently a negative. An unamused resident yelled at us to cut it out.

I wonder if our infraction made the crime blotter of the Snee Farm Hooty Tooty Gazette.

“I cannae take you two anywhere,” we may or may not have heard on the eternal drive home in Mom’s pea green Volkswagen Bug.

(Continued on Page 3)

Seven or eight years later…

The Shoney’s Big Boy that had served up my blended family became a feature story of his own in the Charleston News and Courier.

Maybe one day I’ll take a spin through the microfiche.

The story probably would have landed in Lifestyle. Or could have been Sports, now that I think about it. Because Big Boy got an epic glow-up, transitioning into the mascot of our high school football team.

How did this All-American icon find himself with a Hefty bag over his head, bunged into the back of a pickup and dropped off (maybe in the dark of night) in the respectful Capri Isles neighborhood during the summer of 1982?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Turns out the manager of my stepmother-Shoney’s was related to two of St. Andrew’s most talented (and beautiful) cheerleaders. He was in charge when the corporation decided to break up with their Big Boy.

WORST MARKETING MOVE EVER

By a Southeast Restaurant Chain

Not to editorialize outside of the Editorial page, of course.

So yes, our mascot.

We were the St. Andrew’s Rocks.

Nope. That’s not a misprint I’ll have to run a correction on.

We were The Rocks.

(the mighty, mighty Rocks)

Athletically intimidating and educationally inspiring, don’t ya think?

Stick with me…

When I say “ROCKS,” you say “_____________!”

??????????

CAVEMAN!

You say, “caveman.”

The coolest Manager ever secured the soon-to-be-discarded Big Boy for us, and the Stone Age makeover began in Tina and Gina’s backyard.

As a member of the junior varsity cheerleading squad that year, I was all about it.

Many mornings, after our 6:30-to-8:00 a.m. cheerleading practice, we’d carpool to the sisters’ house and get to work. We were going to turn this boy into a man.

Night and day for a month or so, he stood erect in the middle of what I remember as a cement patio in The Lytles’ backyard. He stared out toward the grass, his rear end reflected in their sliding glass door.

There was a full moon for a bit after we sandpapered off his overalls.

Once Boy-Man was as nekkid as a fiberglass statue could be, we started adding back Paleolithicified features.

With his bulky, six-foot frame, our Caveman was lighter than he looked. Not to judge, but turns out America’s Big Boy was hollow.

After thoroughly exfoliating his moon pie face, we added a heavy 5 o’clock shadow and some bushy brown brows. Brooke Shields had nothing on Cavey of ’82.

Someone made what I can guess was a papier-mâché club for him. But we decided to go with part of a real live tree limb. Authenticity matters.

Then, we draped a faux-bearskin toga over his Crayola-peach skin.

And the crown jewel…

The Shoney’s Big Boy double cheeseburger was transformed into what it had felt like inside the bowels of a generation:

A gigantic Rock.