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."
"You had custom Chevys, custom Fords, the street rods with no tops on them," he recalled. If the appearance of the cars didn't draw enough attention, the drivers revved the engines.