This photo captures a slice of California history—dubious though it may be. In 1954 in San Bernardino, Maurice and Richard McDonald, the founders of McDonald’s, pose in front of their temporary sign (see how it’s weighed down with sand bags) advertising their coming attraction: America’s first drive-in hamburger bar. By this stage, they had been in business for six years and when this photo was taken, had no idea how ubiquitous their name would become. This is the year that Ray Kroc came to see their operation for himself and the rest is fast food history.
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Dubious? More like nefarious, if not then certainly pernicious.
🙂
Hi Alistair, I actually meant “dubious” as in it (fast food) is a dubious contribution to make to America’s eating habits!
Dubious it may be, but it was bound to happen… especially in the SoCal car culture.
I agree, Rich. If it hadn’t been the McDonald brothers, it would have been someone else.
Notice the original sign to the left referencing McDonald’s Famous Bar-B-Q Hamburgers with a chef in full dress! No Speedy the Hamburger Guy in those days…that was the new system. And it’s obvious they were already thinking about franchising potential by saying first one in America. Those boys weren’t dumb by any stretch, they just ran into the frycook’s version of Col Tom Parker and got snookered.
As long as we’re in the Inland Empire in the 50’s era, here’s a little bit of a “connect-me-up” to a railroad photo based site that has lots of stuff from Cajon Pass on down to Riverside in there (and far more to boot)…see if you can spot the Santa Claus train that was run from Riverside to Summit to pick up Kris Kringle and sponsored by Riverside Plaza Shopping Mall. Some of it is ’60’s/’70’s on, but it’s a good view of what was on your way in or out of Los Angeles: http://coastdaylight.com/trains.html