I was reading a roundup of restaurants expected to open in 2011, and there were the usual suspects: a hamburger joint, a fusion restaurant (Japanese-Norwegian, I think -- raw lutefisk served with Minute Rice), Terry O'Bligatory's Irish Pub With Green Stuff on the Walls, and probably a '70s-themed fern bar called P.T. McDrinkery's Libation Emporium. Hats off to everyone who opens a new eatery: It's a grim business, with thin margins, light-fingered employees, fickle-whim patrons who'll descend like locusts if you're trendy and depart for someplace else the moment local foodies discover a tiny place with three tables that serves Peruvian llama livers on skewers.

But buried in the notices was a magical name that made me feel 10 again, and desperate for root beer -- Shakey's.

Ping! If a little bell went off in your head at the name, you remember. It was a pizza chain that limped out of the Midwest a few years ago, a tired old concept thrashed by upstarts and local faves. The restaurants were dark, the tables long; they served root beer by the pitcher. Maxims boasting of the virtues of Shakey's hung on the wall, and there was often a stage where men wearing straw hats and red-and-white shirts would play Dixieland. The chain's founder apparently believed that pizza would be a passing fad unless it was inextricably tied to the sound of a banjo. They had a player piano, too, which frightened as many children as it fascinated: a disembodied ghost machine, banging out songs from beyond the grave.

The pizza? Salty! Cracker-crust and about three molecules of sauce, but that was how Shakey liked it. Yes, there was a Shakey: Sherwood Johnson, nicknamed Shakey because he suffered a nerve condition after he got malaria in World War II, thus making it the only national chain named after a physical infirmity. (There was Blinky's Burgers, but that was later determined to be a habit, not the result of defective tear ducts. As for Weak Bladder Pete's Pierogis, well, there's conflicting evidence.) Shakey died in 1998, but the chain continued -- 60 restaurants in America, 400 worldwide.

It's not just pizza history -- it's a piece of suburban history, as well. The first-ring suburbs were the home of many of these postwar chains, and the churn of time has either flattened the buildings or remade them so many times that they bear as much resemblance to their original design as Joan Rivers 2011 resembles her 1995 incarnation. No one mourns them when they go; people move away, the Shakey's gets knocked down, a Staples rises, life goes on.

But here and there you can find the old commercial landscape, if you know what to look for. I stopped into a new branch of Davanni's pizza in Richfield, and fell into a conversation with the manager: The restaurant used to be a Big Boy, long gone from this market, since images of an enormous obese child with huge oily hair don't have the same appetizing appeal that they used to. Across the street was a Mr. Steak, which turned into a foot clinic. The logo featured a longhorn steer wearing a chef's hat, which, when you think about it, is as creepy as rib joints that have pictures of happy pigs. Come hither and eat my fellow creatures! They have spared me, so I heartily approve. The day-care center was a burger joint; something about the roof suggested an A&W. The eyeglass store was an Embers -- remember the Embers? That special sauce on the Emburger, with the sauteed onions? Down the street, the used-car lot was an Arby's. It's the way of the burbs -- everything was something else, once.

Suburban history doesn't get respectful exhibits in museums, or scholarly papers. But if you live long enough in a place, you know what was there before, and what it was before that. You now recognize the corners that used to have three gas stations by the way the buildings are set back from the street. It never stops, and it shouldn't; in 40 years people will drive past a DNA Sequencing While-U-Wait chain and think Hey, that used to be Shakey's. We used to go there. They had a robot that played a banjo. That's the key to knowing a place, learning what used to be something else.

So welcome back, Shakey's. Don't skimp on the sauce. Tomatoes don't grow on trees, I'll grant you, but c'mon.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/popcrush.