The first fast food place that I recall is the Red Barn. 

A Red Barn restaurant opened in Lebanon, PA, shortly after I got my driver’s license.

I remember being amazed, not so much at the low price of the food, but at the fact that one didn’t have to wait to be served, at least most of the time. Just walk in, place an order, pay for it and either walk to a table, food in hand, or go back out to your car. And the food was reasonably good. If you liked burgers and fries. Which I did, of course.

I grew up on burgers and fries. Don’t ask me how I grew up so skinny. One of those mysteries of life.

That photo above is not the Lebanon Red Barn, of course. The Lebanon Red Barn was on Cumberland Street but as I recall it was on a bit of a hill or a crest, higher than the street itself.

When the Red Barn opened there were no McDonald’s anywhere in Lebanon County as far as I know. I’m not sure if that franchise had even expanded into Pennsylvania yet. I do remember we’d go to Maryland to visit my uncle Neal and aunt Fumiko and cousin Kathy, and Neal took us on a tour of DC and surrounding environs, and one of the things we passed was a McDonald’s with a sign showing how many billions of burgers they had served. I forget what the number was up to at that point. But I don’t recall stopping in to eat at the place.

In fact, I have no recollection of the first time I ate at a McDonald’s, though it may have been during the summer when I was vainly trying to sell encyclopedias.

The first year or so that I was at Penn State the fast food places there were called Winkys, I think. The food was not especially good, but it was cheap. When McDonald’s eventually arrived on College Avenue, Winkys didn’t last very long.

Here’s the article from the Lebanon Daily News for August 13, 1965, announcing the plans to build the Red Barn. That was right around the time that Mr. Spangler would have been giving Pam Barry and me driving lessons.