Vintage Roadside adds to their fiberglass family!

We're thrilled to announce a new addition to the Vintage Roadside family of vintage fiberglass mascots - Harbie the Seal!

We have quite an affinity for fiberglass giants who began their careers in the 1960s as the mascots of places like A&W,  Texaco, Yogi's Fried Chicken, Harbor Gasoline, Uniroyal Tire Stores, and the miniature golf course down the street. As many of these finished up their careers they were either re-worked to advertise something different, or in many cases sadly destroyed due to their size. We like to think of our collection as a "retirement home" for these one-time icons of advertising.

The Harbie the Seal statues once greeted customers outside of select Harbor Gasoline stations in the southern California area. In his outstretched hand (flipper) he held a ship's lantern. These Harbies had spent the last 30+ years living quietly in a canyon above Beverly Hills, California and cared for by a wonderful couple Mac & Natalie.

Beverly Hills Harbies

After months of planning to bring them to their new home the entire road trip "adoption" process ended up happening in just 53 hours! (Keep in mind they were located roughly 1100 miles away.) Here's a rough timeline of how it all fell into place:

Sunday - We get confirmation the pickup we need for the trip is available!

Monday afternoon - Trip called off due to unrelated issue. Bummer...

Monday evening - Trip back on! Elation...

Tuesday 1:00 pm - We leave Portland, OR for Beverly Hills, CA. Random stops for old neon signs and at truck stops for both food & amusing gift shop ideas make up a large portion of the drive.

Wednesday 11:00 am - We arrive in Beverly Hills, CA. Traffic resembles the opening to the movie Office Space and the temperature is already nearing 100 degrees.

Wednesday 11:15 am - We hike up the steep road to the Harbies. We leave the truck at the base of the road as it resembles something seen on Ice Road Truckers - Deadliest Roads. We begin digging the Harbies out of the hillside. Temperature now feels close to 147 degrees. We receive occasional advice, questions, and fond musings on the Harbies from neighbors.

Wednesday 1:00 pm - We have successfully and safely extracted the Harbies and carried them down the hill to the truck. We load them in the truck and drive down the street to lay in the shade of a local park to let the effects of heat exhaustion fade to a more manageable level. We count ourselves lucky we aren't rousted by security as we look like we were dunked in a tank of 12 types of dirt and sweat. Amazingly the water fountain is actually chilled - thumbs up for Beverly Hills Parks!

Wednesday 1:30 pm - We need to make a non-Harbie related meeting. We drive the giant truck with two smiling seals through Bel Air and Hollywood. Pointing ensues.

Wednesday 4:00 pm - We leave the area headed for I-5 north. Amazingly traffic has not improved in the past 5 hours.

That really was 2 giant seals you just passed on I-5

Wednesday 10:30 pm - We stop to eat at a Denny's somewhere along the way. Jeremy proceeds to eat a sandwich that started life as a grilled cheese and is then stuffed with macaroni & cheese as well as a hamburger patty...you can't make this stuff up.

Thursday 4:00 am - After this many hours awake we begin to realize just how Hunter S. Thompson wrote those books. We stop at a rest area to sleep for 2 hours. We awake to an entire tour group surrounding the pickup gleefully posing with the Harbies for photos. In a sleep-deprived state of mind Jeremy makes the mistake of exiting the truck into the mass of people. I briefly consider sacrificing him and quickly driving away.

Thursday 7:00 am - 1:00 pm - We come up with the concept for an all-new event...Trucker Oasis! We spend hours discussing every detail of a 3-day event that will celebrate and honor everything related to being a trucker as well as those that embrace the trucker lifestyle. Also at this point we've stopped counting the number of people pointing as they pass us. Looks of open-mouthed puzzlement have quickly become our favorite reaction.

Thursday 4:00 pm - We arrive back where we began our road trip. Clear thinking will return in approximately 36 hours.

Huge thanks to our friend Jeremy for making the trip! Without his help this whole crazy trip wouldn't have been possible!

To all you you that passed us along the way and gave a wave, a thumbs-up, or snapped a photo or two we'd like to say thanks! It's kind of a boring drive up I-5, so hopefully we made your drive a little more memorable.

And, if you know of a fiberglass mascot needing a new home let us know! We're always ready to load up the truck and head out. We've been saving a spot for a Muffler Man right over there by Papa Burger. :-)

Jeff & Kelly

Vintage Roadside

P.S. You can see more photos from our trip at our Facebook page located here.

The A&W Baby Burger

This week we thought we'd share a piece of our dining ephemera. Raise your hand if you remember getting A&W hamburgers in the shiny foil bags. I remember these being almost as cool as the frosty mugs of root beer. My childhood memories of these 4 different bags has led me to conclude that without a doubt these bags magically improved the taste of the hamburgers. A couple of the ways this worked (in my mind anyway:-) is that the foil bags kept the burger warm, unlike today's paper wraps. They also were leak proof so you ended up with a nice puddle of sauce and toppings in the bag which would "waft" up at you as you took each bite. Ok, those are just wild guesses, but hey, they sure were great bags and hamburgers!

A&W used the silver foil for the Baby Burger, the Teen Burger, and the Mama Burger. If you were ready to tackle the Papa Burger you were worthy of the gold bag.


So, thank you A&W for the memories of "graduating" from the Baby Burger to the Teen Burger, for having the lighted menu boards in the car service area where one of the highlights was flipping the switch for a tray pickup - and for those meals where we decided to eat inside - the menu board with the white phone to place your order.

Zippy the Pinhead visits the Vintage Roadside Burger Family

We were honored to play host to Zippy the Pinhead today as he visited with the Vintage Roadside A&W Burger Family. Everyone got along wonderfully and we wish Zippy all the best as he roams across the country looking for the next great roadside wonder. Come back again anytime!


More great Zippy roadside themed strips can be found at the internet home of Zippy by clicking here.

Vintage Roadside completes the A&W Burger Family

We're thrilled to announce the reunion and completion of our A&W Burger Family here at Vintage Roadside!

The trip seemed simple enough: 1400 miles, 48 hours, and 1 Papa Burger statue. The trip South went well and we enjoyed seeing all of our favorite roadside sights throughout Southern Oregon. We spent the first night in Red Bluff, California and hit the road Sunday morning for the final 3 hours to meet the big fella pictured below. (We gave him a few moments alone to say goodbye to the back yard he's called home the last 12 or so years) After farewells were said we then proceeded to "hop" him across the yard the 150 feet or so out to the waiting truck. The process involved us lifting him about 3" and shuffling about 5' at a time. He's not so overly heavy as he is awkward due to that big hamburger 9' up and out in front of him. We finally reached the truck and were ready for the biggest hurdle: How will the two of us lift him 3' up into the truck?

As you can see in the photo below he's all loaded up and ready to go. What you can't see is that this is about 90 minutes after we had reached the truck! Our original plan was to tip him backwards and "pull" him up into the truck. After tipping him backwards we soon realized his burger and mug were much wider than the truck. At this point we were left with Papa Burger laying on his back partially up the ramps we had brought, us with arms like noodles, and a steady stream of people driving by staring and waving. As we were quickly running out of ideas we heard someone slow down and say the 5 greatest words we could at that time imagine - "You guys need some help?" And to add to this tremendous turn of events, the gentleman was a furniture mover! So, up into the truck he went. He proceeded to lift Papa by the back of his ears while one of us lifted his mug and the other lifted his feet and pushed him upright in the back of the truck. Total time involved, about 10 seconds. We then strapped him in and pondered the safest way to transport something that was now 12 feet in the air at highway speeds.


As you can see in the photo below we decided that without a doubt safety needed to be our number one priority. While we would have loved to have left him uncovered for the amusement of our fellow motorists, we simply did not want to risk his hamburger coming off as we were driving. Since he's now over 40 years old we just didn't trust everything to hold securely. So Papa suffered the humiliation of being blindfolded for the entire trip home. This proved to be another step that took about 17 times as long as we thought it would. It seemed simple: pop into the local home improvement store, buy a giant tarp, throw it over him, tie it up and hit the road. We started with the largest tarp they had. The next step was to cover him up. Sounds simple until you're standing in the parking lot trying to figure out how to get 20 pounds of tarp over the top of something that high up in the air! Several methods were employed until we finally had his head and burger safely secured together. Total time involved: 2 hours. At this point we were finally ready to head back North. Since we were worried about the weather on the pass near Ashland we decided to drive as long and far as we could. We reached the summit of the pass about 3:45 am only to discover it was already snowing quite heavily. We were lucky to have made the summit as the Southbound side of I-5 had reached a standstill due to the number of accidents and disabled semi trucks. We fell in line behind several trucks and slowly made our way down the mountain. Total time to travel 7 miles: 1 hour. We were starting to get pretty tired at this point so we stopped at a rest stop for a bit of a nap. One thing we realized is that it's much easier to sleep in your car when you're younger!


Below is a shot of Papa upon reaching his new home. We'd like to thank our neighbor Mike (and his son) for lending a hand in unloading Papa and for being such a fan of the "Family".
Here's where Papa stands today. We'll do some shuffling of Mama Burger, Teen Burger, and Baby Burger next week and have the four of them standing as a group once again. We're thrilled to finally have our complete set and look forward to years of enjoyment!