Anecdotes

Al Green’s peaked during the 50’s when teenagers from around the city took a liking to its free movies and unique food. I myself lived within a mile of Al Green’s and visited it many times during the 1970s. By then it was by no means the universal teenage hangout it had been in the 40s and 50s but it was popular with my circle of friends because we were free to do hang out and party in the parking lot, where movies were shown on an irregular basis. I found the movies bland and the food unremarkable, however, except for the tenderloins. Giant in size although served on an ordinary bun, the tenderloins looked unlike anything I'd ever seen. The breading was very thick, the meat itself surprisingly thin. Chewing it was sure to strengthen the teeth, not exactly the tenderest meat I'd ever tasted. And since one person was unlikely to finish it by himself, the remainder would often be shared among friends or be tossed around in a food fight. The important thing to know was that this was not just a sandwich but an experience, a conversation piece, a symbol of Hoosier pride, and the one of the most important itema in Al Green's rise to drive-in stardom.

By the time I arrived at Al’s in the 1970s it seemed run down and a little creepy. The hours of operation were irregular, the movies were only shown once in a while, many speakers did not work, and the place was in general disrepair. Aside from a clientele of local high school kids, there were always a few old timers who drove many miles to get their fix of famous food. Many of them arrived in classic 50s cars, wore Elvis hair styles, and like Elvis, never seemed to adapt to the 70s. There they could briefly return to that happier, hippiless time, take their girl on a low budget date, eat food they loved, show off their hotrod, and visit with Belle Green, who always took the orders.

Truth be told, a good deal of Al Green's popularity was owed to Belle Green, a middle-aged Jewish woman, short in stature and portly. She greeted patrons by name. If she didn't know a name, she would ask, then store it in her encyclopedic memory. She seemed to embrace every customer in the same friendly way, including the hayseeds and bumpkins that rolled in from distant cornfields.  When not getting personal with patrons, she was boasting about the quality of their menu, such as their French fries, made fresh on the premises, not frozen. Before working at Al’s she was an elementary teacher in Michigan and then a dietician at Riley Hospital where her brother Morris later became Physician in Chief. One got the impression that she had an extremely quick and intelligent mind, but most of all she loved people.  She had a talent for prying into personal information, asking about girlfriends, boyfriends, brothers and sisters, teachers, preachers, mothers, and fathers, always probing until she found your buttons.  The customers were like guest on her talkshow.

Years later it occurred to me that Belle Green's order counter had a lot in common with the inns and taverns of the 19th century, when travelers had many opportunities to exchange stories as they ate and bedded in the cramped quarters of the numerous inns along the National Road, only 50 feet from where Belle held court.

One of the many mysteries of Al Green’s was the extremely long wait for the orders. Even when there were few visible customers, the wait was typically an hour or two. Our teenage minds simply could not come up with an explanation. Probably the best explanation is that he was swamped with orders coming in from the nearby factories having their second shift lunch breaks. In any case, you didn't go to Al's if you were in a hurry. People would have a hard time grasping this concept today.

Al did all the cooking, standing only about 15 feet from the order counter. This was not like Steak And Shake where all the cooking was out in the open, but you could at least geat a glimpse of it. Al Green was always a silent, white haired man wearing a white apron standing by the grill. It was said that he would shut down the business during Indiana University basketball games and that in the 60s cigar smoking gamblers would congregate at his counter.

The dingy quality of the basement, where the restrooms were located, was another unusual feature. The poor lighting, unsightly conduit and junction boxes, along with the dank odor, was something you’d never see at a chain restaurant. Also mysterious is the fact that one of the wrecking crew members who demolished the building in 1994 claimed that Belle was living in the basement up to a month before demolition, a suspicion that has been confirmed by multiple sources. This wrecking crew member claimed to have filled four dumpsters with equipment, tables, cabinets, vats of ancient grease, etc.

Unfortunately, no future archeologist will ever have a chance to excavate this ancient grease (pun, get it?) since it was hauled off to a dump by the wrecking crew. If any archeologists do happen upon this gem of a dig site, they will probably find mostly empty rooms since the salvage crew cleared out the content. That raises the question, why haul away junk from an underground site that was to be filled in anyway? Why not use the junk as fill? This is just one of the many mysteries.

Al Green's rode the crest of the post-war expansion in the 40s to 50s, an time period of exuberant growth for the nation, and then burned out as it descended back to earth, leaving a trail of stardust in its path.  The restaurant itself is gone but its spirit still lives, like “a song that will not die,” reminiscent of Hoagy Carmichael’s immortal Stardust.