Payday Tacos--by Bryan Franks

Back when I was about nine or ten my parents started a monthly ritual of making tacos on the day they went grocery shopping at the market. Dad got paid once a month and they would buy groceries for the whole month. Us kids would help to carry in the bags from the car. I think maybe my little brother was too young to help or maybe carried something light. The other three of us hustled though because we knew the faster we got them unloaded the quicker we'd get to eat homemade tacos. 

This was the mid-sixties and tacos weren't so common in most parts of the country. San Bernardino had it's share of taco stands though. It's always been the capital of the fast-food industry with the original McDonalds on E Street, just up a couple blocks from San Bernardino High School. 

Original building.

The taco stands, as we called them, were mostly Mom and Pop operations. El Burrito, Taco Mia across from the Orange Show, Taco Tia that is the only one still in operation with multiple locations and Taco Aqui on Highland across from Perris Hill Park, to name a few. 

Lower: 1950s carhops. Upper: 1960s Taco Tia menu.

Ed Hackbarth in front of the drive-thru menu at the original Del Taco in Yermo, California.

Del Taco came to my neighborhood on 40th Street in 1968 and is the taco place I ate at most often. It was the sixth Del Taco at that point, a franchise owned by Arnold Shapiro. The first location started in the High Desert by founder Ed Hackbarth. 

Original McDonalds in San Bernardino in the 1950s.

We didn't eat out much when I was younger but by the time I got to High School and off-campus lunch was an option, I would make my way to Del Taco on 40th or McDonald's on E Street depending on how much money I had. You could eat at McDonald's for about 40 cents. A hamburger for 25 cents and a coke for 15 cents, no tax. 

Sometimes my van would be full of kids as I wound down the dangerous curving hill on North E Street headed to Mc Donald. The van so full it would lean dangerously as I rounded the curves. I guess my media teacher Ms. Peck saw me one lunch hour and scolded me saying that I was going to kill myself and a bunch of kids. She wasn't an old person yelling at me, she was bearly out of college and liked me. I liked her too and took her advice and slowed down.

I had no idea how much influence tacos would have in my future as I sat and ate those homemade, fried corn tortilla shell delights back in 1965. All of my jobs would involve tacos in some way until 1979. First I worked at Bakers Burgers and Tacos in 1969, on 40th Street at the age of 15 as a janitor, spraying hot sauce off the outside tables and cleaning the parking lot. 

In the summer of 1973, I moved to Costa Mesa on the coast with Greg Reiner, a school friend, It was my first adventure away from home. I got a job working the graveyard shift at Jack in the Box on Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa to pay the rent. Jack in the Box had those mystery meat tacos that were so good after a night of drinking at the disco. The trick was not to fall asleep in the drive-thru which I did once. That job lasted the summer and I was back home in San Bernardino with no job.

Original Del Taco in Yermo, Ca.

I got a job at Del Taco through a family friend that was a manager. On October 2, 1973, I started working at the Del Taco in San Bernardino on Ninth and Waterman. It's not there anymore, too much crime. I started on the grill on October 2, 1973, and by the spring of 1975, I was managing a Del Taco in Riverside, California, very close to the owner's home. He would stop in for Taco Nite on Tuesdays with his wife after their church bowling league using the drive-thru. I think it was six tacos for a dollar and they were big, too. I was always on the lookout for the owner's baby blue El Dorado to make sure his tacos were perfect. Ed was a perfectionist and his restaurants reflected that. The cleanest most professional of any fast-food operation, on par with McDonald's very professional standards. I spent many midnights washing walls and ceiling to pass impending inspections. Little did I know when eating my Dad's tacos on payday that someday tacos would give me my payday. 

A typical present-day Del Taco

I worked for Del Taco until 1979. I had been transferred to open a couple new locations as the company expanded. The Seal Beach, California location that I managed was used to film and produce training films for the company. A new idea and of course they choose a Beta Max format.  
Anyway, they used my crew and we showed the correct way to make food and serve it while being filmed. It was a big feather in my cap and I thought sure I would be promoted in due time. 

Unfortunately, my immediate supervisor got it in his head that I must be gay and even confronted me as we were opening a new restaurant in Wilmington, California. I had mentioned that we ought to get a plant to put next to the order window and he just decided that was just too gay. For reference, it was 1978 and there were plants everywhere including those fern bars. So it was really weird and I denied it because you had to back then. It did make me realize that I wasn't going anywhere in the company. I had already been passed over for a transfer to Georgia, where the company was expanding. Those stores didn't make it and at just under 600 locations Del Taco is still mostly in the western United States.

Anyway, my career was over as far as advancement was concerned. I decided to resign and move to San Francisco. That story is one of the first ones I shared on this blog, the Consortium of Seven. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I had an experience of a lifetime and even though it didn't last, it was worth the risk and I grew personally by just being out on my own and starting over. Of course, San Francisco in the 70s was perfect for that sort of experimentation. 

I regret very little in my life, there are a couple things that I would do differently, but walking away from the repressive homophobic atmosphere that developed at Del Taco was not one of them. 
And of course, there are always tacos that make everything better.