Do you want fries with that?

(Credit: Photo provided)

When Brandy Lindsey was a little girl, she’d spend her days behind the counter of The Beacon, the iconic Spartanburg drive-in, watching her grandfather work. Sometimes, she’d visit her grandmother at Simple Simon, another well-known Spartanburg drive-in.

Years later, Lindsey still acknowledges the impact drive-ins had—and continue to have—on both her life and her hometown. “For Here or to Go?,” recently published by the Hub City Writers Project, is a collection of stories and photographs on the drive-ins and diners of Spartanburg, including the Nu-Way, Ricky’s, The Skillet and Wade’s. It’s Lindsey’s love letter to the restaurants she grew up in and a testament to the historical and social importance of the drive-ins to her hometown.

“I started thinking about Spartanburg’s history in general,” she says. “We had the mills in the first half of the century, but then they died down. After that, the only other history I could think of that still existed was our restaurants. And it’s not just the restaurants that have been here, but some of the same families and employees have been here 40 plus years.”

A graphic designer by trade, Lindsey started working on the book more than two years ago and enlisted local writer Baker Maultsby, as well as photographers Carroll Foster and Jeffrey Young to help her realize her vision.

Though the project seemed overwhelming at first, Lindsey quickly made the decision to focus on exclusively drive-ins, drive-thrus and diners. Along with her collaborators, she interviewed drive-in owners, employees and customers both past and present. She pressed locals for images of restaurants that were no longer in business and had Foster and Young photograph the ones that are still around.

“We wanted to stick to the documentary style,” Foster says. “We’d go at different times. We’d go before prime time and then wait for it to hit. We wanted to convey how it is at each restaurant. Any art is a vision of the beholder. We tried to put it out there as it is.”

He says he and Young wanted to capture not just the look of the restaurant and the food they serve, but the personalities and characters who inhabit the bar stools and booths and those who serve them. The hardest part, he says, was whittling down the more than 2,000 photos he took.

“The book could have been twice as long,” he says.

Lindsey collected nearly as much information in her interviews with locals. While she says each person she talked to had an interesting story, the one that resonated with her most was Vernon Smith’s, a semi-retired sign letterer who had a lifelong business and partnership with his father.

“It touched me,” Lindsey says. “They literally painted this town. He left his mark. We ended up giving him his own page in the book.”

Though the book focuses on restaurants in Spartanburg, Foster says the appeal of the book will likely be universal.

“It’s important that it’s documented and put out in a way people can relate to,” he says. “Everybody has to eat.”

A book party for “For Here or to Go,” will be held from 7-9 p.m. Nov. 3 at Hub-Bub’s Showroom, and will include hot dogs and sweet tea from local diners, music from the 50s and a photography exhibit. The book can be purchased at hubcity.org, Barnes and Noble, Irwin’s ACE Hardware, participating restaurants and Hub-Bub.