Sandy's Hamburgers

Tonight I've been doing a little research for my proposed fifteen-volume encyclopedic work What Used To Be Where, Back In The Day (and you thought I was joking about that, didn't you?)

In the course of my studies, I just happened across a delightful web page devoted to the long-since-departed Sandy's Restaurant in Louisville. Sandy's, apparently a Scottish-themed burger joint, had a girl in a kilt and a plaid beret for their mascot and served a specialty burger called a "Big Scott". They operated one location in Paducah and three locations in Louisville. Of the Louisville stands, one was at 5009 South Third St. (pictured above in a photograph taken on October 16, 1971) another was at 1007 W. Broadway, and the other was at 1420 Poplar Level Road. The Paducah stand was at 1726 Broadway.


There's nothing like a gang of retro-obsessive hunter-gatherer archivists to restore my faith in the human condition. These people are hardcore serious about reconstructing the lost memory of Sandy's for posterity, as it should be. Here's an example from their site to illustrate their zeal:

"The 1968 Sandy's locations list shows one of these locations as a possible 1967 opening. The 1973 list shows Poplar Level Road as Sandy's #317 and 3rd Street as #318 which points to a 1973 opening. Perhaps these locations were rebuilt as the new mini or maxi Sandy's restaurants as some locations were switching to the new buildout at this time and maybe they were renumbered into the 300 range at that time.

Robby Delius shows yet another scenario by providing both the 1965 and 1969 city directory listings for Louisville which shows Poplar Level and S. Third Street as being in existence in 1965 as well as 1969!"

We need more people like this in America.

And it gets better. It turns out that this lovingly detailed paean to preserving memorabilia related to the Sandy's of Louisville is actually just one page among many in a greater effort to hoard photos, menus, and even signage from every Sandy's restaurant that ever existed on Earth. It could take two hours to absorb it all, and if you're as much a card-carrying member of the Society For The Preservation Of Everything as I am, then you will devote those two hours to this holy work.


But wait, there's more!

Sandy's is just the tip o' the iceberg - that link is actually just one small fraction of Captain Ernie's Showboat, a truly leviathan site that assiduously sniffs out all available effluvia regarding a whole raft of obscure and neglected stuff from our collective childhood of the Midwest - everything from Romper Room to Cactus Jim to the Davenport, Iowa Morning Farm Report!

Life is good.

106.7 Goes All-Elvis

The Wallingford Broadcasting Company has made the wacky decision to change the programming of their Richmond, KY station 106.7 to an all-Elvis format. Though it smells like a publicity stunt - they're urging listeners to give feedback on the website - the change is said to be permanent.

You might think an Elvis-only station would quickly get monotonous and redundant, but Elvis' catalogue consists of approximately 1000 different songs, and that's not even counting bootlegs and marginally-released material. Furthermore, this number skyrockets exponentially when you consider E's voluminous wealth of live versions and alternate takes.

(The Beatles, by comparison, only released approximately 300 songs and made only a handful of live recordings.)


Then again, some of the arcane material in the King's mighty oeuvre is pretty out-there. The common radio listener who might tune in expecting "Hound Dog" or "Suspicious Minds" might be a tad confuzzled by such obscure Elvis tunes as "Queenie Wahine's Papaya", "There's No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car", "Dominic the Impotent Bull", "He's Your Uncle Not Your Dad", "Petunia The Gardener's Daughter", "The Fort Lauderdale Chamber Of Commerce", and my personal favorite, "Do the Clam".


You can listen to 106.7 online by clicking here.

Kentucky's Radio Station for the Blind

I'd never heard of the Central Kentucky Radio Eye service until I happened upon this Herald-Leader news story tonight:

Last Monday, the management at Central Kentucky Radio Eye, the Lexington-based reading service for those physically unable to access the printed word, was informed that the network which provides the satellite feed for the majority of CKRE's 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. broadcast was to cease all service Sept. 30.

Margarget Chase, executive director at CKRE, immediately sent out letters to her 80 area volunteers explaining how devastating this will be for the blind and disabled across the country who depend on the InTouch Network, a service funded by the Jewish Guild for the Blind for 32 years.

Determined not to have any dead air over CKRE's airways, Chase and her staff created a plan to continue 24-hour service to the 3,000 customers they serve in Kentucky.

"What we are going to do is step up our own programming," Chase said. In the beginning, some shows might have to be repeated, she said.

"I have lots of ideas for new programming," she said, some of which will be heard Oct. 1.

I find it fascinating that such a specialty radio station has existed all these years and I never even knew about it. CKRE broadcasts on a closed-circuit frequency, and to receive it you need their special pre-tuned radio, which they are happy to supply. (CKRE requests a one-time $25 user fee, but if you're unable to afford it, there's a good chance they'll just give you one anyway!) The CKRE broadcast can be heard in an approximate 80 mile radius outwards from Lexington, reaching as far as Owenton in the north, Berea in the south, Bardstown in the west, and Beattyville in the east.

You might ask, isn't all radio sort-of ideal for the sight-impaired? Well, what's super-special about CKRE is that they broadcast people reading local and national newspapers. Listeners can hear readings from such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Readers Digest, Christian Science Monitor, etc. Pertinent info from local papers like the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Louisville Courier-Journal are also read aloud for listeners.

They also provide a live internet streaming broadcast - listen to it here. Since they're looking to fill all that time with their own self-generated programming, I wonder if they'd let me bring back my old "Late, Late Show" radio program and play stuff like Henny Hendrickson's Louisville Serenaders and Cornelia Froboess records?