I didn’t grow up eating Big Macs or Whoppers or Chalupas. The fast food burger chains were just starting to expand in the 50’s but in Totowa, N.J., where I grew up, we didn’t know anything about McDonald’s  or Burger King.

Fast food for me was Nedick’s.

Nedick’s was urban. It wasn’t on any highway. There was no drive-thru, not even a parking lot. You could find Nedick’s at a bus depot or train station, at a sports venue or hotel.

My go-to Nedick’s was on Washington Street near City Hall In Paterson. As a pre-teen my look at the outside world was pretty much confined to Paterson. I could take the #12 bus to downtown Paterson and there was a Nedick’s right where I would pick up the bus to go home. And I rarely did without stopping at the Nedick’s, even if it meant waiting for the next bus. I could always kill time checking out the 45’s at the record store next door.

One New York Times writer described Nedick’s as New York’s Starbucks. And for a younger me, indeed it was. On those rare occasions when my dad would take me into the city we usually entered via the Lincoln Tunnel and parked in the Times Square area to avoid further driving in the city. That meant a quick bite at Nedick’s on 42nd Street. When I went to the old Madison Square Garden on 49th and 8th, there was a Nedick’s on the premises. There was also one in Penn Station and outside Yankee Stadium.

Nedick’s served food to take out. But most of the outlets also had an old fashioned lunch counter with wait service.

I’m sure they must have had some other food, but my order was always the same: a hot dog and an orange drink. The hot dogs were made on the type of rolling grill you commonly see at concession stands at sports venues. I imagine you can let the dogs roll around on one of those grills for quite awhile and still have them taste fresh. No wrapping the food in paper and stuffing it in a bin at Nedick’s. Your tube steak would come straight off the grill. It was served in a toasted split top roll like the ones commonly used for lobster rolls.

What was even more iconic than the Nedick’s hot dog was the Nedick’s orange drink. There are still folks on the internet looking to puzzle out the Nedick’s orange drink recipe. Non-carbonated, it was some mix of orange juice, sugar and water. It had some pulp and a hearty pour would leave a frothy top. It was addictive.

Nedick’s dates back to 1913 when the first store opened in a hotel on 23rd Street and Broadway. The name is a mashup of the last names of the two founders, Robert T. Neely and Orville O. Dickinson. It would eventually expand along what we now call the I-95 corridor between Boston and Washington. Size wise it reached its peak in the 1920’s when the number of locations grew to 135. It shrunk during the depression but by the 1950’s had rebounded to 75-80 stores.

The last Nedick’s shut its doors in 1981. Most commentators cite the competition from the new chains of fast food restaurants. But the demise of Nedick’s was a symbol of the changes in American cities. As retail stores moved to suburban malls, as movie theaters were built in strip malls on highways rather than city downtowns, as more and more Americans owned cars and bus and train service shrunk, Nedick’s ultimately found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I probably haven’t ordered an orange drink anywhere since.

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Some other “Growing Up in the 50’s” posts:

The Corner Store

Christmas Time in Paterson

Thinking in Ethnic Slurs

The Night Two Guys Burned Down

A Decade of DIY

Tricky Dick on Main Street

Bomb Scare!

The Shop

Baseball

The Automat