Gone But Not Forgotten 1: TasTY CHicK

The sign's been there as long as I can remember. It was already retro-looking back in the late 1970's when I first got my driver's license and started exploring the region around my hometown. Tasty Chick. My friends and I would laugh like Beavis and Butthead whenever we saw it, but they served up some damn fine fried chicken from their little building off Route 83 in Vernon CT.

We used to go to Connecticut Golfland in Vernon. They had miniature golf, go-karts, and the bitchenest video arcade in the area back in '78. They had one hell of a taco joint there, too, where the cook made his own killer taco sauces. After CT Golfland replaced the taco stand with a crappy Subway shop, Tasty Chick became our first choice for lunch on our way back from a morning of racing around the go-kart track or battling Space Invaders.

Fast-forward twenty years to the mid 1990's. It had been five years or more since I'd been through Vernon, but I'd recently started a small computer consulting company with a friend and we had clients in that town. Tasty Chick was still there on Route 83, and just as delicious as ever.

The last time I'd been there was in 2004 or so. They closed a couple of years later - some kind of dispute with the landlord, from what little I've heard about it. But the sign is still there in all it's retro glory.