Obituary: Harvey Charbonneau was the man behind a '50s icon

Decades before teens met in the clouds of social media, they hung out at the Roadside Drive-in to chew the fat over its celebrated three-decker Hobo burger.

The man behind the chrome counter was Harvey Charbonneau. He opened Roadside in 1948 on North Snelling in Roseville after returning from World War II and fighting in Germany.

Charbonneau, of Lindstrom, died recently at age 92, but memories of him and his restaurant endure for his former employees.

Boasting 80 car stalls served by dozens of carhops, his drive-in was one of the biggest and busiest in the Midwest. It was an icon of the 1950s, the kind of place memorialized decades later in the TV series "Happy Days."

"It was exactly like Arnold's in 'Happy Days,' only it was twice as big," recalled Larry Charbonneau, a nephew of Harvey's who worked for years at the drive-in.

The scene was liveliest on summer weekend nights, when the drive-in became part of a cruising circuit that included stops at Porky's drive-in restaurant in St. Paul.

"They'd make the loop back to Roadside," said Mel Vanderbilt, 73, who started working there at age 13. So many cars streamed into the parking lot, "on Friday and Saturday nights there'd be two policemen on duty to control the traffic."

"Every once in a while someone would get the bright idea ... and they'd get tossed out," Vanderbilt said.

The drive-in became so popular a hangout that Charbonneau devised a gate and token system to make sure that the motorists were actually buying food.

"So the people who really wanted to spend something could find a spot," said Ken Rutford, 68, of Lino Lakes, another longtime manager.

Many teens landed their first jobs with Harvey Charbonneau and described a progression: first cleaning the lot, then working as a car hop and finally running the register.

"He was like the father of the whole place," recalled his nephew Larry, who said Harvey even lent money to kids going to college.

"He had a huge garden right next to the place and he'd grow 50 tomato plants, so we used local tomatoes every fall," Larry said.

Besides his Hobo burger, there was a caricature of a hobo on the restaurant's sign.

"When he was 18 he worked his way out to the West Coast with a buddy on trains," Larry said. "And he did meet hobos."

Roadside ended in 1972 when Charbonneau leased the property to a different fast-food experience: Arby's.

Harvey Charbonneau is survived by his wife, Betty, his longtime partner in running the restaurant, as well as many nieces, nephews and friends.