Odd how some of us get nostalgic for fast food restaurants. I remember Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich restaurants in L.A. in 1968. When I started working with Jack Kirby in 1970, there was one not far from his home in Thousand Oaks. Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, everyone in the Kirby house would caravan (usually took two cars) down there for lunch, where Jack would drive his wife Roz crazy by dipping his french fries in barbecue sauce. "You're supposed to put ketchup on french fries," she'd tell him — as if the police were likely to come by and bust him for Improper Use of a Condiment.
At the same time, there was a competing attempt to launch a chain of Lone Ranger Restaurants. Locally, there was one in Santa Monica and another at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood — where now there's a huge mall called The Westside Pavilion. The Lone Ranger Restaurant was right where the Barnes & Noble is now situated. I recall the burgers at the Lone Ranger being amazingly close to inedible, which may be why the whole chain went under in less than two years, but the places did have one thing going for them. The Lone Ranger himself appeared often at the ones in Southern California…and I don't mean some actor in a Lone Ranger suit. I mean Clayton Moore himself. You could go, eat a terrible hamburger and meet Clayton Moore and get an autographed photo. He also had a little stash of silver bullets which he passed out to anyone who seemed to know a little Lone Ranger history. It almost made up for the food.