Frisch's 50th: Side orders of Anderson history

By Rodney Richey, Herald Bulletin Feature Writer

July 17, 2009 09:47 pm

— ANDERSON — For generations of Andersonians, Frisch’s Big Boy has been a sentinel guarding their memories.
The frozen-in-mid-leap statue of the company’s Big Boy logo has stood watch on the front lawn since the place opened in 1959, perpetually hoisting his namesake sandwich aloft, grinning an eager grin after his first bite (which can only be viewed while standing behind the statue).
It counts as its contemporary brethren Frazier’s Dairy Maid, The Toast, the Lemon Drop and Gene’s Root Beer.
Frisch’s was the domain of one Edward Todtenbier, who built the place and ran it until his death in 2007.
On countless summer evenings in the 1960s, under a long portico staffed by carhops, Anderson’s motorized young people, sometimes in couples, often in groups, cruised the parking lot, to see and be seen, in much the same way young people later strolled through shopping malls.
All of this history will be celebrated from 2 to 7 p.m. Saturday, when the remaining Anderson Frisch’s, 500 Broadway, will mark its 50th anniversary with a party. (Coincidentally, July 24 is National Drive-Thru Day.)
Current owner Ren Todtenbier, Edward’s son, will fly in from his Louisiana home to make an announcement regarding the future of Frisch’s in Anderson. Apparently, that’s all the corporation is allowing him to say.
“Our corporate folks have given us a directive, and we can’t veer from that,” Todtenbier said Wednesday by phone.
Ren Todtenbier spent his early years in Anderson, attending Edgewood Elementary School. He moved away but returned in 1982, staying until 1994. Much of that time, he managed the third Frisch’s, at Mounds Mall.
Ren remembers his dad as a fisherman who nevertheless loved his restaurant and its customers.
“He loved the restaurant business, and he loved fishing, probably equally,” said the younger Todtenbier, who recalled his father’s insistence on fixing things himself.
“The Coke system broke down, and so he went down into the basement with his screwdriver. He got close to one of those Coke tanks with syrup in it, released the pressure, and the tank blew Coke syrup into his face, knocked his glasses off, and when he was trying to see, he stepped on his glasses and broke them.”
Ren and another employee were standing nearby. “We tried not to laugh, but we had to.”
On another occasion, a collision at the kitchen door caused Ed Todtenbier to knock a tray of six strawberry pies all over a young carhop who was carrying them.
“Before my dad could think straight and properly,” Ren Todtenbier said, “he picked up a towel and started wiping this woman’s chest. Then, when he realized what he was doing, he ran out of the store and did not come back for three days.”
Still, the young Todtenbier remembers that his father loved his customers and didn’t mind the young people cruising the lot.
“He thought it was the greatest thing in the world,” Ren said. “A lot of people wanted him to locate somewhere else, but he wanted to locate there, because that was the hot part of town back in the late ’50s.
“A lot of people who are married today were either proposed to or dated at Frisch’s. And I would venture to say that, in that dining room, there were a lot of business deals made as well.”
Ren Todtenbier, who deals in health insurance in Louisiana, said he has no interest in continuing to be an absentee manager, but he stopped short of spilling the big secret.
“Economic times right now are making things very, very tough,” he said. “I’m an absentee owner, and I live in a very comfortable little town in the South. And I have no intentions of running a restaurant at this point in time. I can’t tell you much more, other than, at 6 o’clock on the 18th, we will make an announcement.”
Contact Rodney Richey, 640-4861, rodney.richey@heraldbulletin.com.

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