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!

Waiting for Papa

Here's a shot of what the Vintage Roadside backyard now looks like. We have Mama Burger, Teen Burger, and Baby Burger waiting for Papa Burger to arrive. We should have the reunion completed in the next few weeks and will post updated photos then.

Relocating the (A & W Burger) Family

If you've ever looked at photos of an A&W Burger Family, a Muffler Man, or a Bob's Big Boy and thought - "Wow, that would look great in my yard", we'd like to share some tips on how to achieve this lunacy.

First, unless you have a yard the size of the lawn at the White House some sacrifices will need to be made. We've always enjoyed our back yard and even though the planting beds have done well, the grass has always looked like the "before" photo on a box of lawn fertilizer. For us, it seemed completely reasonable to spend an entire Sunday removing every bit of grass in our backyard. Below is a photo of the sod partially removed.



After removing the sod you will end up with a pile ranging in size anywhere between a VW Bug (tiny yard) up to a small apartment complex (normal size yard). This pile will be extremely heavy and will take years to finally compost or dispose of. Plan a discreet place for this new addition to the family before digging.

While your yard is bare soil you will be entertained by the sheer number of robins who arrive daily to enjoy a bumper crop of worms. We usually had around a dozen all day, every day, until we placed the landscape fabric.

After placing the bender board around the yard and putting down landscape fabric we were ready for the gravel. We chose a small, round gravel composed of lightly colored river rock. The round rock won't get stuck in your shoes - a bonus if you have wood floors. We have a fairly small back yard but still needed 4 yards of gravel. Never missing an opportunity to make things interesting we had to wheelbarrow each load from the front of the house, around the far side and into the backyard. The reason for this - our Papa Burger statue that's been with us all along blocks the driveway preventing a short, straight path. We were also treated to a typical Oregon afternoon which included sunshine, torrential rain, hail, and just a bit of thunder. Being veterans of many a day spent outside gardening we knew that by simply having the gravel delivered we had ensured this very type of weather.



One of the hardest parts will be locating the newest member(s) of your family. We were lucky enough to find a recently restored set in Northern California. This set was found sitting in a field in South Dakota about 12 years ago and brought to California. The photo below shows them as they were when we picked them up last week. The second photo shows Baby Burger waiting to be loaded into the truck.



One thing to consider is just how big these guys are. In addition to size, they are also somewhat awkward to move without the help of several people. Since there were just two of us, loading Mama, Teen, and Baby took us around three hours with some tricky maneuvers and lots of luck. For reference Papa Burger is around 8' 6" tall and almost as wide, Teen Burger is just over 7' tall, Mama Burger is right about 7' tall and Baby Burger is almost 4' tall. They require a fairly large truck for transporting them - we used a 14' Uhaul with 7' clearance inside. As you can see Mama Burger fit standing up but Teen Burger was too tall and had to come home laying down. We placed plenty of padding underneath to ensure he wouldn't be damaged. Another thing to consider is that most of these fiberglass statues are now 40 years old and have become somewhat fragile. If you have one shipped by a freight company it would be worth the extra expense to have it properly crated.



We were also doing a show this weekend in Sacramento and had arranged to combine the event with the picking up of the family. Baby Burger was the star attraction of our booth all weekend. The kids loved her and several had their picture taken with her. It's great to see how these statues still make people smile 40 years later.



Here they are waiting to be unloaded. Happily they all made the trip safe and sound...of course there may be some drivers out there wondering who the crazy people were driving 50 mph up the freeway. Unfortunately the one casualty was our neighbor's gutter, which took a hit when we tried to fit the 11' tall truck between our houses. Ironic that we made the 1340 mile trip without a scratch and then crunched the gutter! We'd like to say "thanks" to our neighbor for being understanding and also a fan of the Burger Family:-)



We'll post photos of them placed in the yard in the next few days. We also will be retrieving Papa Burger sometime in the next few weeks. We're looking forward to having the whole family back together again.

We hope you enjoyed the process. If you're considering adding one of these roadside icons to your yard and need affirmation please contact us and we'll help you rationalize the decision.