Velociworld

The Green Frog

There was a restaurant in Waycross, Georgia when I was a child called the Green Frog. We always ate there when we went to Waycross to visit the Okeefenokee Swamp, or to visit my crazy aunt in the smelly apartment.

Man, that place smelled funny. Like a crazy middle-aged woman without a man 1962 apartment is supposed to smell.

I wrote about this once, but in 1962 my siblings and I were imprisoned in this apartment one night while my parents and crazy aunt went out, probably drinking. I recall seeing a magazine with a caricature of President Kennedy on the cover holding his head to his hands, as if in great pain or frustration. Next to him, the cause of this grief, was Alfred E. Newman, saying "What, Me Worry?" I have no idea what this was supposed to represent, because I was only five. I did recognize JFK, however, and I did recognize Alfred E. Newman. Was Alfred Khruschev? The Economy? Republicans? I have no idea. Perhaps this wasn't even Time, or Newsweek. Perhaps my aunt had used some primitive type of Photoshop to create this herself, the amalgams of her perfect man, as yet unmet. It could explain the smell. I didn't look inside the magazine, because the cover scared the shit out of me.

Back to the Frog. So I remember the Frog distinctly, and while it wasn't a fancy place, it was known as the best restaurant in town. It gives you some sense of Waycross that a place that served frog legs was the best restaurant in town. And it was essentially a luncheonette.

I opened my newspaper this morning, and there was an article on the Green Frog, closed now over 20 years. It seems one Bill Darden opened the Frog in 1938 at the age of 19. He hired a young fellow named Joe Lee as a cook. Lee still runs Darden Restaurants. It's still a going concern because, although the Frog is closed, Darden opened his first Red Lobster in 1968, then went on to found the Olive Garden chain. Darden Restaurants owns 1,300 restaurants, and employs 140,000 people.

Damn. I never knew that story. All that from froglegs, and a boy selling fish sandwiches on the side of the road. Arnold could have talked about Bill Darden last night.