Fat Franks 1981

On Thursday, March 27, 2014, Bill Dannemiller <wddannemiller@gmail.com> wrote:

It’s another cold , gray Ohio morning . As I drive around town it and see all of the familiar places that I spent my youth everything seems so familiar . All I can think about when I drudge up my memories from the early 80’s is how I rebelled against a lot of things and couldn’t wait to grow up so I could get out of here and live my dream life in the sun . Here it is over 30 years later and I’m still here wishing for a better future amongst the cold , gray depressingly familiar sky .

Fat Franks

In 1980 . I was 13 and had very little money but it didn’t take much money to have fun back then . Kids back then would find all kinds of ways to get money . We would get ours by returning the pop bottles to the Sparkle Market at Highland Square . My brother and I would pack up as many 8 packs and large bottles that we could and make the 3/4 of a mile trek to the Sparkle . We would get 10 cts each for the singles and a quarter for the large bottles . When we would get there Hazel the one eyed pop bottle lady would say in her Quasimodo like slur from behind the customer service window glass .

“Pop bottles . Pop bottles . Put your pop bottles in the metal box.”

On a good day we would be able to carry enough to make between $3.50 and 4 bucks to share . Just enough to get us over to Fat Franks across the street .

Fat Franks was a deli at highland square that had a back room with 3 pinball machines and just about every early 80’s video game that you can imagine . Space Invaders , missile command , PAC man , galaga , asteroids , centipede , dig-dug etc…

I used to hang out there with people like the Volke Brothers , hamad brothers, paul and pat mccaffrey , Mickey , Nick and a bunch of various juvenile delinquents that your parents didn’t like you hanging out with . There was skeeter bomberter , creepin Jesus , rob Hendricks , Billy upton and