Visit to a Castle
Al Koch June 2021
This is the front side of a business card used by a White Castle executive, probably from the 1950s. The card itself is not in the customary rectangular shape of a business card. Instead, the edges on the top side of the card follow the turrets and roof of the building.
White Castle celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Founded March 10, 1921, in Wichita, Kansas, by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson, White Castle was America’s first fast food restaurant. Their signature square, steam-grilled burgers, affectionately called sliders, became the most influential burger of all time.
If you think about this promotional item produced in the early 2000s, you have to believe that White Castle’s marketing team has a sense of humor about their product. This is an air freshener to hang on the rearview mirror of your car. It has not been unwrapped from its package, which makes one wonder: Does the smell it creates in your car resemble the “perfume of grilled beef and onions?”
Today there are over 375 locations, primarily in the Midwest. One hallowed location, White Castle #30, is right here in Whiting, Indiana, on the corner of Indianapolis Boulevard and Cleveland Avenue. I grew up in the shadow of it, with my family’s house less than a half-block from this gleaming porcelain palace.
Everyone and everything on the 1800 block of Cleveland Avenue proudly wore the perfume of grilled beef and onions. When meeting friends or conducting business around town, residents from this part of the city never had to mention their address. A couple of discreet sniffs by the other party was all it took to identify the aroma of America’s favorite “belly bombers.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you lived on White Castle Street!
That exalted recognition is one of the major reasons I continue to be so faithful to this hamburger fortress. Another is that you can meet some of the most unforgettable characters there, especially in the wee small hours of the morning. Years ago, long before the advent of the drive-thru window, customers could come inside the White Castle at any hour of the day or night. This 24-hour oasis of carbohydrates and caffeine was the final pit stop before heading home after an evening’s adventures. Allow me to share with you a vintage episode circa 1960 from the movie called life.
On a late night at White Castle, probably in the early 1950s, customer Emil Matlon enjoys a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other as he relaxes at the counter of the Whiting White Castle.
One night, just a few minutes after 3:00 am, I entered the stainless steel and glass home of these beefy cholesterol cookies and took my place in line. Ahead of me were two other customers. Actually, there were three, because the two guys directly in front of me were together. As I waited my turn, the customer first in line made his move to where the counter-girl was waiting to take his order. It was at that moment that life’s unseen director yelled, “Roll ’em, this is a take. ACTION!”
It was clear this gentleman was a well-seasoned, battle-tested campaigner of late-night adventures. Doing his best to maintain a vertical position, he exuded the fragrance of distilled spirits often referred to as the “working man’s plasma.” No question he was a charter member of the “one-more-round-close-the-bar-down” club. Wearing a tattered beer-stained and cigarette-burned pink bowling shirt emblazoned with the name of a grocery store that had closed more than ten years ago, he spoke to the counter-girl with more sound than syllable. She was able to decode his utterances—being well-schooled by after-midnight clientele—and proceeded to fill his dine-in order: two White Castles and a large black coffee.
The guy fumbled a wrinkled twenty to the top of the counter. She totaled the order and placed his change on the counter. He made a stab for his change, missed, and began to lose his balance. The counter-girl, who’d turned away to grab the coffee, didn’t see him collapsing like a deflating rubber doll, sliding toward the floor.
White Castle worker Gladys Sinsabaugh makes sure the coffee pot is wiped clean for the customers of the Whiting restaurant in the early 1950s. Before World War Two, White Castle had no women in its workforce.
The man’s lips, firmly pressed against the counter, mimicked the sound of airplane tires massaging the runway during a high-speed landing, squeaking down the face of the stainless steel and glass enclosure, leaving a trail of saliva-streaked burn marks. Mercifully, he met the floor. There he stayed, motionless, oblivious to his surroundings.
Blinking his glazed eyes back to awareness, he worked his fingers frantically as if trying to grasp the rung on a ladder. Instead, he found the feet of the next customer, clamped his hands around both ankles, and held on for dear life.
With his order ready on a tray, the counter-girl approached the spot where she’d last seen her customer. She glanced toward the booths—no sign of him. Then peering over the counter’s edge, she saw the pile of clothes that enclosed her customer and noticed the vise-like grip he had on another’s ankles. With a pleading look at the two guys next to order, she asked, “Help me out.”
Along with Walter Anderson, E.W. Ingram, Sr., was the founder of White Castle. Anderson, a professional cook, created the burger and came up with the slogan, “Buy ‘em by the Sack.” Anderson, a businessman, liked the slogan when he partnered with Anderson, but both of them discovered that if people really did buy a sack full, the burgers at the bottom of the bag would get crushed. So in 1931, they developed a cardboard carton to keep the hamburgers warm, and from getting crushed.
Her recruits were already in action. After brief negotiations with the pink-shirted man, convincing him that he was not going to fall down an elevator shaft, he released his grip on the stranger’s ankles. Carefully they lifted the folded man from the floor, helped him to a booth, and placed him in position so he could enjoy his hamburgers.
Unflappable, the counter-girl followed the two Samaritans, set the man’s order on the table, and went back to work. Thanking her helpers with kind words and a smile, she got their order ready. Taking one final glimpse of the man in the pink shirt leaning toward his burgers and coffee, they headed out the door to the parking lot.
I’d just finished giving my order when we heard a strange sound. Gurgling? Similar, but different. Then it hit me. It was the sound that we made in grade school when we blew through the straw to make bubbles in our milk. The one difference now was that this sound was more rhythmic with a definite cadence. Looking around for the source, all eyes zeroed in on it simultaneously.
Mr. Pink Shirt had tipped forward. As his head completed the arc toward the table, his nose had somehow lined up precisely with his cup of coffee. In what must rank as a classic dunk shot, his nose was now submerged in his cup of black coffee. With the rim of the coffee cup supporting his face, he was perfectly aligned to snorkel his coffee in between gulps of air. Mindless of his own plight, he continued to serenade us with this nasal bubbling as two square hamburgers served as sentries. Other waiting customers unconsciously kept time to his proboscis percussions by tapping their feet on the floor. I stuck around for one more toe-tapping chorus, picked up my order, and left for home.
Back then, when people couldn’t sleep or stayed up all night and that unmistakable craving hit, an entertaining nightcap over at the White Castle was always in order. I miss those times. Because today during those same wee hours, sacks of world-famous sliders are now delivered from the drive-thru window to a waiting car. They’re still as tasty as ever, but the late-night movie isn’t as entertaining.