To folks from Milwaukee, George Webb will not need an introduction. Most of us will remember a time, sitting at the counter or in a crowded booth in the neighborhood hamburger parlor, going back to at least the 1950’s. I googled George Webb Restaurants and learned that the first restaurant had, indeed, opened in Milwaukee in 1948 – the year before I was born.
Most days, my family ate Mom’s home made dinners, often peasant food recipes that she had grown up with. We had borscht – still my favorite – a couple of times a year. And Holubtsi, Ukrainian stuffed cabbage. I can firmly state that I have never cooked that dish – since I tried my best to peel the cabbage off the ground hamburger meat, to eat the best part, to leave the boiled cabbage on the plate, as a child. That didn’t work; as children, we were expected to eat what was on the plate. Remembering, I have to think that my Dad liked those meals, or we would not have eaten them. He was not a fussy eater, in my memory – although I learned that my mother’s order at the local bakery – “dark rye without caraway, sliced” – was free of seeds because Dad didn’t like caraway. Maybe she did cater to his tastes, the bread earner in the family.
“Once in a great while (a favorite expression that my Dad used, and which Jeff repeats to this day)” Mom cut the coupon to George Webb’s Hamburger Parlor out of the Green Sheet in the Milwaukee Journal, and we had a trip to the closest George Webb Restaurant to pick up the bag of 7 hamburgers – for 99 cents. That’s right: 99 cents! Hamburgers were a special treat; I expect that Mom had carefully figured that splurge into her weekly budget, just as carefully taking the cash from the folder that held the weekly food allowance, as well as other budgeted items: rent money, Christmas savings, utilities.
In the 1950’s, Mom still cashed the paper check that Dad brought home from work on Friday afternoon – his union wages enough to raise a family, and enough to set aside something for a rainy day, and elder years – at the local grocery store, standing in line with the other housewives whose families waited for shopping to begin. Before Mom learned to drive in the 1960’s, Daddy drove us all to the grocery store after work on Friday, and we followed Mom through the aisles as she carefully read from her shopping list. The end of the week had come, and the weekend was beginning.
The shopping cart included bacon and eggs for Daddy’s daily breakfast, and cold cereal and milk for Ronnie and Suzie and me. The shopping cart included ice cream, always, and necessary ingredients for holiday baking before Christmas. Sometimes, the shopping cart carried a ham for a special holiday meal, and the necessary makings for holiday cookies, when the time came.
All of these memories point to the memory that our meal of George Webb Hamburgers was a special meal.
When I can, I like to find my way back to a George Webb Hamburger Parlor in Milwaukee, not to satisfy my taste, but as a way to remember. And I like to sit at the counter, where the cook staff still makes sure that each coffee cup is full, and where a line of workers still sits, enjoying the ambience (!), saying a few words to the person on the next stool at the counter, and quickly pulling out a newspaper or cell phone to get the local news.
Some things never change – in the midst of lots of other things changing!
