Who remembers Skip's Fiesta Drive-In in Melrose Park, IL?

[Highmiles]

I used to drag race there in my youth.

Picture teens hanging out, drag-racing, sipping on chocolate sodas and eating cheeseburgers -- like in the movies "American Graffiti" and "Grease." Now picture it happening every night in the otherwise quiet western Chicago suburbs from the 1940s to the 1970s.

That was Skip's.

"Life was more laid-back then, and fun was easily accessible. You didn't have to spend a lot of money or have a lot of fancy gadgets -- just your car," said Penny Pagor, who was 15 when she first put on the white blouse, black shorts, black fishnet stockings and majorette boots that were the Skip's uniform in the early 1960s. Waitresses in the years before her wore roller skates. After her, Skip's servers wore skimpy bunny suits with black fishnets.

Skip's was founded by William Nielsen after a conversation around the kitchen table one night. There was no Skip -- just Nielsen, who liked to invent hamburger recipes in his mother's kitchen and decided to open a business offering good food, his relatives told the Tribune in 1983.

Because of its location -- on a stretch of North Avenue surrounded by forest preserves and few traffic lights -- Skip's was a magnet for teens who drove Thunderbirds, Mustangs, Galaxies and other cars that looked extra good in the drive-in setting.

"I went there to show off the car, as many did," e-mailed Bob Mattern, 65, who grew up in Oak Park. He started with a 1966 Chevelle SS 396, traded it in for a new SS 396 and wound up with an air-conditioned 1968 model that "was unacceptable in the teen world -- how can you blast a radio with the windows up?"

The soundtrack in Mattern's mind from that era includes "Summer in the City," "Wild Thing" and "Louie, Louie."

Bill Grossi, 56, remembers how when he was a kid his father got angry one time when he was trying to drive his family home from Kiddieland but got stuck in traffic. Teens had closed down the road for a drag race.

"It was amazing, truly amazing. The inmates were running the asylum," Grossi said laughing, adding that years later when he was a teenager, Skip's was still the place to be for him and his friends.

The non-stop crowds made for busy work shifts for Pagor and other waitresses, who were assigned a number each night and given a stack of thick plastic cards with that number to place on their customers' windshields. If a customer drove off with a number, waitresses were charged 50 cents for the loss. Stolen trays cost servers $1.50 apiece -- a hefty penalty for waitresses paid 10 cents a car plus tips, Pagor said.

She remembers management at Skip's being so strict that waitresses were not allowed to use the restroom before midnight. If waitresses were even five minutes late for a shift, managers would confiscate their paychecks, Pagor said.

Still, she thinks fondly of her three years of waiting on 200 cars a night at the popular hangout.

"I still remember this little boy who was in the back seat of a car. He kept popping up saying, 'My dad says you girls is tomatoes,' " Pagor said. "And the dad kept saying, 'Sit down and be quiet.' "

Although fans of Skip's remember the restaurant's heyday well, few can pinpoint its closing. Nielsen, its founder, died March 7, 1972. Business already had slowed, Pagor said, because drive-ins weren't as popular.

Not long after it closed, Skip's already was being memorialized. Pagor attended a Skip's reunion at the Kane County Fairgrounds in 1973, wearing her full uniform. Years after, Skip's regulars still drove in caravans to the McDonald's that replaced it, sometimes circling the drive-through without ordering anything, just to honor their old hangout.

The McDonald's manager who was able to talk when things calmed down said she'd never seen a caravan of Skip's fans in her seven years of working there. But if people did come back to remember, she said, she probably wouldn't know anyway.

"I don't live around here, I live in the city. I just drive here and go right back," she said.

Librarians at the Melrose Park Public Library do see fans of Skip's. At least once a month, someone comes in looking for a photo or newspaper clipping or anything to remind them of that time, said Barb Giordano, library director.

"Some of the older people, they just like to relive their youth and just remember times gone by, when life was a little easier," Giordano said.