I remember the first time I traveled on the road by myself, I stopped at Howard Johnson’s in Springfield, Illinois and had the franks and beans and a small loaf of dark rye bread. Little did I know that Jacques Pepin had something to do with that. My college pals and I used to go in and plunder their all-you-can-eat clams on Fridays. In graduate school I would go in and order ice cream and coffee and the waitress would keep refillling the coffee and I would sit and smoke cigarettes and do my homework for a couple of hours and they didn’t mind. I think the last time I found a HoJo to stop at was over a quarter-century ago in Kentucky.
“My college pals and I used to go in and plunder their all-you-can-eat clams on Fridays.”
That was our HoJo’s gang fav dinner on Friday night.