Turning to more important matters, my buddy Earl Kress writes…
Hey, now just a minute! At least on the east coast, Roy Rogers' Roast Beef Sandwich was actually good! As opposed to Arby's which served something gray with little holes in it that they called roast beef. I haven't eaten in an Arby's since 1978.
To which I tell my buddy Earl Kress: Yes, once upon a time, Roy Rogers' Roast Beef Sandwich outlets did serve a great sandwich. Back in the early seventies when they were all over Los Angeles, they were just about the best of the fast food places. But things change. Their L.A. outlets all closed. I think they all turned into Bob's Big Boy Jr stands, and then some of them were bought by the Golden Bird Fried Chicken company. I missed them.
Around 1983, I was flown to an outta-town comic convention and as I was driven from the airport to the hotel, we passed a Roy Rogers. "You have them here?" I asked my driver with great excitement. He told me the whole town was lousy with them — and I guess the word "lousy" should have been a dead giveaway. The next day, I arranged for a group of us to lunch at one and, boy, what a disappointment. It was nothing like the old Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich places of Southern California. It was even a cut below Arby's, where I've always thought they had one large lump of synthetic meat and no matter what you order — beef, ham, turkey, a milk shake, an Arby's t-shirt — they carve it from that lump. A few years later, for I am a fool who doesn't give up easily — I tried a Roy Rogers place in New York and had much the same reaction. Apparently, the chain has changed hands a few times over the years and, legalisms aside, the current Roy Rogers empire has nothing to do with the ones in which I dined in my late teens/early twenties. This is why we prize places like In-n-Out Burger, which still have the same owners and management they've always had. Some things just shouldn't change.