Adventure Car Hop

There are several Route One former businesses of which I am constantly trying to find photographs. The Drive-In Theater, Kiddie Ranch and the Adventure Car Hop top this list. The number of photographs or advertisements of these establishments are very hard to come by and therefore highly prized when discovered.

The delightful print of the Adventure Car Hop shown here was brought to my attention by a reader a few weeks ago and was created by William B. MacGregor Jr. Mr. MacGregor was born in Medfield, Massachusetts in 1947 and after high school, attended Wentworth Institute, Northeastern University and McIntosh College. He spent many years working as a mechanical engineer in high technology laboratories and as a drafting consultant for a Boston television station. His career is impressive and varied and his prints and watercolors are now part of private collections both in the United States and abroad. He has always been fond of automobiles and is sometimes known as “The Junkyard Artist”.

Older Saugus residents certainly remember the Adventure Car Hop. If you were lucky enough in the Fifties to have a car, the Adventure was the place to go with the gang for hamburgers and fries on a Friday or Saturday night. Those kids who didn’t have a car would have to get a ride from a friend and chip in for gas. This really wasn’t a hardship since a dollar would buy almost four gallons!

Many of us growing up in those good old days remember listening to Woo Woo Ginsburg on WMEX: “Oh Adventure Car Hop is the place to go, for food that’s always right, Adventure food is always just so, you’ll relish every bite. It’s out on Route One in Saugus, come dressed just as you are, Adventure, where the service is tops, and you never get out of your car!”

I remember taking pride as a teenager in living in a town with such a famous establishment. I suppose that there were other drive-in restaurants which were as good (The Lasso in Everett featuring “honey baked ham” comes to mind) but a mention of the Adventure still tugs at my heartstrings. Why, Oh why did it have to leave us?

Common sense tells me that teenagers today have just as exciting a world to grow up in as we did in the Fifties and early Sixties but somehow, I can’t believe it. In those days automobiles were big and beautiful, the music was fresh and exciting (and you could understand the lyrics), outdoor movie theaters were common and we didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Most of all, there was a warm glow of security that seems absent today. For me and others that world ended on November 22, 1963 but perhaps it is just a sign that we are growing old!