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"Drive-In
Memories - Hot Shoppes" by Paul McGehee. In 1927 a man named J. Willard
Marriott started a small food stand selling root beer and Mexican
food...and the rest is history. Born in 1900 and raised in Utah, while
performing missionary work for the Mormon church on the east coast he
fell in love with Washington, D.C. and soon decided to move there with
his wife Alice. On his initial visit, he had observed that with the
large number of tourists in the Nation's Capital it was a lucrative
market for commerce. With the help of his wife and a business partner
named Hugh Colton, Marriott secured the rights to the A & W Root
Beer franchise for D.C., Richmond and Baltimore. He opened a 9-stool
stand that sold the sugary brew at 3128 14th Street, N.W.,
and with its success soon added Mexican food items to the menu. It
became known as The Hot Shoppe. It wasn't long before Marriott expanded
his business to several different locations. The Hot Shoppes also
supplied food to government agencies and Marriott began offering his
expanding menu of culinary delights to airline passengers passing
through the local airport (located where Arlington Beach once was, now
the site of the Pentagon) beginning the first full-scale airborne food
service operation in the country. Hot Shoppes restaurants were
springing up everywhere by the 1940s and 50s, and Marriott soon got
into the hospitality business opening hotels which were oftentimes
paired with a Hot Shoppes restaurant. A real American success
story...and it all started with a root beer stand. The scene depicted
is of the drive-in Hot Shoppes which the artist remembers frequenting
with his family as a child. The 1965 view of the Arlington, Virginia
location across from Lyon Village on Lee Highway holds many memories of
fun times and wonderful food. Mighty Mo's, Teen Twists, cheese rolls,
thick milkshakes...it all comes back when you look at this nostalgic
artwork. Inside the Hot Shoppes it was tastefully-decorated in colonial
style, replete with long-handled bed-warmers mounted to the wall next
to pictures portraying life back in the 1700s. Adjacent the dining room
was a magnificent gift shop with everything from D.C. souvenirs and
Pennsylvania Dutch handmade soaps to imported Japanese litho-tin
battery powered toys, space ships, cars and robots. At night, the
drive-in strip, its awning lit with yellowish fluorescent light, was a
major local hangout for families and teenagers from the local high
schools. You would pull your car into a parking slot, peruse the menu
on the tray kiosk, speak your order into the microphone speaker, and
soon a tray of wonderful-smelling delights would be delivered to your
car by a cheerful young lady dressed in the Hot Shoppes uniform. Those
were the days. "Drive-In Memories - Hot Shoppes" is faithfully
reproduced from Paul's
original color pencil and acrylic paint artwork as an archival quality
print issued in a strictly limited edition of only 2,000 pieces each
hand-signed by the artist.
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