How’d you like a T-bone steak, fries and drink for 45 cents? SOMEONE dropped off a note in the wee hours of Thursday to report an adventure of “local cowboys, aka Iola police officers,” the contributor wrote.
If time travel were possible, you could duck back to the 1940s and do just that at Hart’s Lunch in downtown Iola.
D.L. Hart, Gilbert, Ariz., was in town last weekend for an Iola High class of 1948 reunion and brought along an old Hart’s menu. His dad, Dave, ran the popular hangout, conveniently only four blocks from IHS.
The most expensive thing on the menu was Hart’s Club Steak (thick cut) for 65 cents.
Steaks probably weren’t the meal of choice for “be-bop-a-lula” teenagers. More likely it was a 10-cent “large” hamburger, maybe chili or a piece of pie, also a dime each. Hart’s also was popular with folks who worked downtown, and likely found a nice steak appealing.
That was before the fast-food chain restaurants predated most of the drive-ins.
Every town had a place similar to Hart’s. In Humboldt we had the King Burger, which put out a hamburger that was a meal in itself by the time all the condiments were piled on.
Wife Beverly’s dad, Lacy Mintz, got in the act. He always had a garden large enough tending it was nearly a full-time job, and he picked up a little pocket money providing tomatoes.
My favorite was a burger at a joint on South Ninth. An old fellow named Sinclair ran the place — apparently never slept because he was there day and night. His were the first charburgers I ever ate; he hovered over the grill with a cigarette in his mouth with ash sometimes an inch long and I have no doubt some of it occasionally found its way onto those burgers.
The author said several of them had a chance to exercise their herding skills on North Jefferson Avenue, maybe an hour before the sun broke the horizon. They dealt with “very unruly and wild strays,” which led the officers “to dismount their trusty steeds” — patrol cars — “to get the strays to turn in the right direction … the determined cowboys eventually got the three does headed back to the woods” — accompanied, I would think, by “get along little doggies!”
Hart’s Lunch once was place to be
