The Best Damn Onion Rings!

The Best Damn Onion Rings!

Once again I find I must ask for my reader's patience and understanding by writing another blog about how things were in the old days. I can hear your responses to that as I now sit here.

“Is he going to talk about the good ol' days again!” or

“Good Lord, he's off on a another long memory tangent again!” or

“If I read just one more story about how it was back in “the day” I think I'll...”

Yeah, I get that. I can feel your pain as another famous Bill was fond of saying. But doggone it folks, some of those stories are interesting and some of them are enjoyable, both to write (from my end) and to read (your end, of course). At least I think so. So, with that caveat floating over all our heads, here we go for another ride on the memory express.

My wife and I went out to eat on Saturday evening. Although there was food in the cupboard at home, nothing seemed to appeal to us at that moment, so we decided to motor on down the road to a new/old restaurant that had opened/reopened recently. As to why the conflicting adjectives you just read, please know that this restaurant had opened its (I think) third incarnation recently and had been receiving rave reviews from our friends who had dined there. Its name is Bishops and anyone from my hometown will immediately recognize the name and know what I'm talking about. Its probably as famous in these parts as Nathan's is in Coney Island, Geno's or Pat's is in Philly or Tony Packo's is in Toledo. On our way to this newly re-arisen icon of local gustatory splendor we happened to pass through a neighborhood of our hometown where I used to live. It was now one of the no-so-nice parts of town – a label that wasn't necessarily the truth back when I was a kid and lived there. Of course being just a kid, what did I know, eh? It was perhaps a post-war ghetto back then also, but that's beside the point. Being in that neighborhood sparked many memories of my childhood and those memories immediately caused my mouth to open and my voice to start reciting some of them to my wife. Perhaps it was more of a verbal acknowledgement of the memories rather than an actual impulse to “tell a story” to my wife. I may have even started talking if I had been alone in the car. One never knows. But of course, in our 41 years of marriage I had probably told her these stories before. Possibly multiple times. She was nice enough to hold her tongue, at least for a while, and let me blabber on which more than likely added yet another accumulating layer of polish to her halo. I wisely kept my remarks fairly short, too, not wanting to get that “look” from her, even if I felt the urge to keep on yammering.

When I was a kid – call it kindergarten through sometime in 4^th grade – maybe ages 6 through 10 or so, I lived in the south end of our town. It was definitely a working class neighborhood – low to low middle if you wanted to categorize it. Dad worked in a factory and mom was a homemaker. Both were, and in my opinion still are, honorable professions. I believe the house we lived in was a rental as I don't think dad actually bought his first house until later - 1960 or thereabouts. It had two floors plus a basement. Although I think it was an OK house for the time for us, it also happened to be situated in an ideal location for a kid.

Let me explain.

Behind the house was a largish yard with the customary swing-set and sandbox for the kiddies. Dad had made the sandbox by cutting a large truck tire in half along the tread leaving two big doughnuts. He'd painted one of them red, white and blue, placed it open side down on the ground and filled the middle with play sand. Voila, sandbox! The other half he flipped over and filled with water. That was like a little round river we could use to sail our toy boats on. The yard with it's playthings for us kids was a plus for sure, but go out the back gate to the yard and that's where the real fun began. Behind our yard was an alley and behind that? First there was the storage yard for the telephone company's telephone poles. Behind that was a railroad track and way further back from there was the city dump! To the right as you faced the pole-yard was a storage area for a gravel company and they had huge piles of gravel there. Also be aware that nothing was ever fenced! It you were an average kid, all this wonderland was freely available! I ended up spending years of my childhood playing in those areas – hide and seek in the pole-yard, king of the mountain on the gravel heaps, putting pennies on the railroad track to get flattened by the slow-moving freights that rumbled through there a few times a day, playing tag everywhere and just doing kid stuff. The only rule my folks had was to stay out of the dump and, to be honest, we did. It was smelly and had lots of rats. Not really very appetizing and we had all those other areas to play in.

It was nirvana for kids.

You might ask, did any of you get hurt messing around back there? Any one get hit by a train? Anyone? The answer is, of course. Kids do dumb stuff and occasionally get hurt. I can remember one neighbor kid breaking an arm jumping off the roof of a nearby shed. He had a sheet on his back like a cape and believed, at least for the short time before he hit the ground, that he could fly like Superman. It was a hard lesson but there were some of us that needed hard lessons before anything sunk in. As far as I know he never jumped off a roof again. I see his name on social media once in a while, too, so he's still breathing.

Once again, apparently, lesson learned.

We also messed around with b-b guns and yes, we got stung a few times from “innocently” misaimed shots. No eyes shot out in my group, although I knew a fellow later in life who suffered that injury. Just none of my group ever did.

For all the rough play and many, many hours of fooling around, remarkably few of us kids sustained any lasting injuries. Bumps, bruises, a cut here or there. What we defined as normal.

Anyhow...

On school days I had a “special” way to get from our house to my school. I would first leave the house by the back door. Then down the alley to the pole-yard. Across the pole-yard to the railroad tracks. Down the tracks a few hundred yards to another alley. Up that alley to a street where I'd pick up a friend. The two of us would then go up a street, cut through another alley and we'd be at our elementary school. It was a short cut for me and, to be truthful, it maybe cut off a tiny bit of travel distance from my home to the school.

And it was cool!

Anyhow, because we'd just driven by the house where my friend from those old days used to live, all those long ago memories fluttered through the ol' noggin.

Now, back to Bishops...

The first incarnation of this restaurant was as a drive-in just north of our hometown. It was THE place to go to see and to be seen. Everyone would, from time to time, go there for a meal and for a look-around to see who else was there. Especially the teens of the area. This was particularly evident on Friday and Saturday nights. You'd park in the lot, look at the menu posted and soon a carhop would come out and take your order. She'd return later with the goodies on a tray that attached to your car window. When you were finished you'd turn on your headlights and they'd come back out to remove the tray. All the while you were there you'd play your radio to the approved rock 'n roll stations. (C'mon, you were a teenager too. You knew which stations were cool and which ones played the best music.) You'd listen to the tunes and check out the rest of the folks there. Bishops on a Friday/Saturday night was a must do!

Most everything they had on the menu was great, but they were known far and wide as having the absolute best onion rings anywhere and anytime. Bar none! They were big, chunky rings, heavy-cut suckers with a golden-brown crunchy breading just out of the hot oil and smelling delicious! They more resembled doughnuts than onion rings. The breading mix was so beloved that they packaged it and sold it in brown paper bags with the Bishops logo on it so you could make your own rings at home!

The years went by and then the owners were... well, to be honest I'm not sure why the place closed. Was it an economical decision? Possibly the owners were offered a goodly sum for the site and chose to sell it? Their location was prime real estate in those days. Or maybe the owners grew old and weary, tired of the endless hours of running a popular restaurant? Maybe it was a combination of pressures that caused the first incarnation of Bishops to fold. I really don't know for certain.

Many years later a sit-down restaurant opened with the same name about 8 miles east of town. They were some relation to the original owners, I guess, or they had bought the rights to the name and menu, so those remained the same as the original. It remained open for some years but just didn't seem to get the business that the original did. I wasn't sure if it was because it was quite a ways out of town or maybe the ambiance was different? Maybe? Just don't know about that one either.

Anyhow, it closed too.

Word swirled around the social media in the past several years that Bishops was going to open another place here. Or was it there? It was to open next month, or six months, or a year, or two years down the road. No one seemed to know anything concrete until the rumors finally became the truth and the exact place and time of the new Bishops was disseminated. It was coming back home where it belonged.

It finally reopened a few months ago. It's within my hometown's city limits and its business, from all the accounts I've heard, has been very, very good. Most people I've talked to have mentioned waiting in line for some periods of time before being able to be seated. But they have all agreed that it was well worth the wait and the food is definitely as good as the original.

If not better!

So our stars aligned properly on Saturday and we went out to experience the new Bishops. We could hardly wait to give 'er a try and to add our comments to the throng already acclaiming the merits of the place.

First off, yes we had to wait. Not long – maybe 5-10 minutes. We were led to a table in one of the two dining rooms and it was clean and ready to go. Our waiter was prompt with the menus and to take our drink orders. He returned quickly and our supper wishes were soon in the kitchen's capable hands. In about 10 minutes our orders were being set before our hungry eyes.

Bishops is not a fancy place. It never was in the past and it remains the same today. I observed that most orders are still served in plastic baskets with a layer of heavy paper inside just like they were in the car-hop days. The food is set on the paper and brought to you just as if it was being delivered to your car window at the drive-in. We'd ordered fried chicken and onion rings. We'd loved those dishes in the past and were curious as to how today's would compare. My wife's other side dish was cole slaw and she said it was as she'd remembered from the good ol' days – sweet and creamy. I got baked beans as my side and they tasted homemade with shreds of what appeared to be pork roast intermingling with the savory beans. The chicken was as remembered, crispy/crunchy breading with moist and juicy chicken inside. The onion rings were as we'd hoped – perfect and crunchy with the fresh onion inside steaming hot.

It was every bit as good as I remembered.

I wrote a friend about our experience there that evening while it was still fresh in my mind. I was effusive in my praise. I was and am ready to return at a moment's notice. I want to check out the rest of the menu. The shrimp looked great at the next table, the clams and perch all sound yummy. And the homemade pies looked fabulous.

And of course we have to have some more of those divine onion rings!