In-N-Out Burger (9 page)

During their high school years, the brothers possessed one-half of the all-important teenage social equation: a set of wheels. However,
when it came to the other half—girls—Guy and Rich came up short. Painfully timid around the opposite sex, neither dated much or had girlfriends that anybody could recall. They were, however, at ease with Susie and Kathy Nissen, “because we were like little sisters to them,” explained Susie.

At some point, Guy developed a crush on Kathy. And when he was not quite eighteen, he made a gallant and rather old-fashioned gesture. He got up the courage to ask her father, Norm Nissen, for permission to ask his thirteen-year-old daughter out on a date. However, Norm turned him down. “My dad said, ‘Noooo, you're too old,'” explained Kathy. It was another thirty years before Guy got up the nerve to ask her out again.

 

In 1965, when Guy was fourteen years old and Rich was just thirteen, a golfing buddy of Harry Snyder's convinced him to invest in a 50 percent stake in a new drag strip called the Irwindale Raceway. Built in 1964 with a quarter-mile track, the “Dale” (as it came to be known) was one of the numerous sanctioned drag strips sprouting up in Southern California in the wake of the founding of the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). The investment soon proved to be a canny move that further solidified the association between cars and In-N-Out that began with the drive-through. It was also a natural extension of the time when In-N-Out was a stop on the illegal street-racing circuit.

Born in the salt flats and dry lakebeds of the Mojave Desert during the 1930s—where hot-rodders first topped speeds of 100 mph—drag racing had changed greatly in the postwar years. Where dragsters once had free rein to run the lakebeds at El Mirage and Lake Muroc, they increasingly found themselves edged out by the U.S. Air Force. Taking advantage of the temperate climate and the flat, vast, and remote lakebeds, the air force began testing new jets and rockets there. On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier while flying the experimental Bell X-1 in the sky over Lake Muroc at Mach One at an altitude of 45,000 feet.

A year later, Alex Xydias, a B-17 engineer during the war and no stranger to the lakebeds, opened the So-Cal Speed Shop on Olive Avenue in Burbank. It was at El Mirage that Xydias hit a record 130.55 miles per hour in his belly-tanker made from a Ford V-8 60-horsepowered engine and a simple open-wheel aluminum frame. Soon, the lakebed days were numbered. In 1949, Muroc was officially converted into Edwards Air Force Base and became the testing ground for X-15s and later the landing site of the space shuttle. The dragsters were forced to move their action from the salt flats to urban asphalt.

While some of the contests were held on abandoned airstrips, the majority of them were held on city streets, luring crowds and creating a public nuisance. Law enforcement took a decidedly dim view of the dragsters, and had long sought to clamp down on the illegal street scene, implementing ordinances against hot-rodding and closing down streets altogether.

For many young men, racing powerful, noisy cars at maximum speed was not just a bullet of freedom but was a revolt against the parochial values of their parents. It wasn't just a sentiment among hot-rodders; it could be found among the automakers in Detroit as well. In fact, Clare MacKichan, one of the design engineers behind the seminal 1955 Chevy, later explained that the car's design target was to represent “youth, speed, and lightness”

In an effort to “create order from chaos” (as he put it), in 1951, Wally Parks, a dragster himself and the editor of
Hot Rod
magazine, launched the NHRA. A former military tank test driver for General Motors who had served in the South Pacific during World War II, Parks saw the long-term advantages of organized drag racing on off-road sites. In creating the NHRA, Parks realized that he could promote and legitimize the sport of legal speed racing while combating its low-rent, outlaw image. The NHRA implemented safety rules and performance standards and began operating a number of drag strips and races under its own sanctioned program. For a time, the NHRA sponsored a traveling Safety Safari, a portable drag strip caravan that promoted the sport across the country. As a result, drag racing became
a hugely popular spectator sport, at times even eclipsing baseball and football games, and soon attracted commercial sponsors.

The sport had so transcended its humble beginnings that it was the subject of an April 29, 1957,
Life
magazine cover story: “Hot Rod Fever.” By the early 1960s, the NHRA had over 130 approved strips in forty states under its sanctioned umbrella. The Dale was one of them.

Located just west of Irwindale Avenue and north of 1st Street, near the boundary of Irwindale and Azusa, the strip was perfectly primed to become a hotbed of Southern California's growing hotrod activity. The city of Irwindale, a flat expanse dotted with rock quarries, small industrial parks, and the occasional battalion of palm trees, was just twenty miles east of downtown Los Angeles and a short three miles from Baldwin Park. Flat, dry, dusty, and ferociously hot in the summer, Irwindale had more rock quarries than residents. In fact, the city was nicknamed
Jardin de Roca
(Spanish for “Garden of Rocks”) owing to the fact that nearly every highway in California and a number of those west of the Mississippi were made from Irwindale's rock and gravel pits.

At the time of Harry's involvement with the drag strip, there were only a handful of In-N-Out Burger outlets fanning out from Baldwin Park. Each was hugely successful, replicating the popularity of the original, claiming long meandering lines of near-rush-hour proportions from opening to closing time. But In-N-Out Burger was still something of a local phenomenon, clustered strictly within the San Gabriel Valley. The Dale opened up In-N-Out to a much wider audience.

Possibly owing to his early days working various refreshment and game stalls at the Venice pleasure piers, Harry Snyder shrewdly decided not to be a mere investor but to supply the food at the racing track as well. There were two concession stands; one on the north side where the starting line, staging area, and spectator stands existed, and the other on the south side where the pit and finish line stood. The stands sold In-N-Out burgers—but they weren't officially part of the growing chain. They were simple wooden shacks at the Dale with the words “Snack Stand” painted in black across them.

The racers and fans who frequented the Dale fondly recalled that the burgers and fries were almost as much of a draw as the races themselves. “I'm not sure if it was the atmosphere or what, but they tasted better there than anywhere,” recalled Valerie Althouse, who raced at the Dale between 1969 and 1971. “I think people loved to come to Irwindale for the food. One of the reasons that the track had such a great reputation was basically [that] the snack stands were In-N-Out even though they didn't say so.”

On any given race day, the Dale's grounds were swarming with cars and people. Young kids used to sneak into the track through the gravel pit that stood outside the staging lanes. In those early days—in the mid-1960s—the track operated races that ran all weekends from noon until ten at night as well as on Wednesday evenings. It was still the early days of drag racing, before the big money races, when the dragsters paid to get into money brackets—with winners taking home a whopping one hundred dollars and, of course, gleaming trophies. The Dale was so frequently packed and noisy that at one point residents in neighboring Azusa complained, asking the raceway to research noise control.

The rowdy races helped In-N-Out Burger earn a reputation outside of Southern California. Racers who had been to Irwindale began spreading the word about its burgers. As part of the NHRA, people from all over the country began descending upon the Dale and its legendary snack stands. Soon enough, going to an In-N-Out Burger became part of the racing circuit experience.

One of the first female dragsters, Eileen Daniels (who began racing in 1955), can still remember her first In-N-Out experience. It was 1957, and Daniels (along with her husband, Bob) was running the raceway in Indianapolis for the NHRA. On a trip to Southern California, “some guys from the NHRA told me I just had to try an In-N-Out Burger,” she recalled. “I got the cheeseburger and the french fries. Just outstanding, great flavor.” That was it. Going to In-N-Out Burger became a ritual. Actually, more than a ritual—it grew into a fifty-year habit. Daniels explained, “I make it my very first meal when I come to California.”

 

During his years at the Dale, Harry Snyder opened a handful of new In-N-Out Burgers. Between 1966 and 1972, he unveiled new stores in Azusa, La Puente, Pomona, and even ventured outside of the chain's home turf, launching new shops in North Hollywood and Panorama City in the San Fernando Valley (for comparison, by 1968
^*
there were one thousand McDonald's across the country).

Harry often conducted business meetings for the Dale and In-N-Out from his San Dimas living room. Esther left Harry to be the public face of their ventures. She took care of the bills and handled the paperwork of both businesses—but while she preferred to remain behind the scenes, nothing escaped her knowledge. “She was a great lady, just incredible,” remembered Steve Gibbs, whose childhood relationship to In-N-Out Burger came full circle when he was tapped by Harry to manage the track in 1966. A veteran of the San Gabriel drag racing circuit, Gibbs grew up in Baldwin Park and courted his wife during high school in large part at In-N-Out Burger.

Gibbs was just twenty-six when Harry offered him the top position at the track. He had been working part-time initially, just on the weekends, and after Harry noticed Gibbs and his hard work, Snyder increasingly gave him more to do before making him manager. “Harry had strong opinions on a lot of things but he wasn't hard to work for—you knew where he was coming from. He was clear.” Gibbs, who would later become the vice president of competition for the NHRA, also remembered Harry's fiery temper and his ability to cool down and let bygones be bygones, “he could blow up, then say his piece over it and he'd be laughing later on,” he said. “If he was upset, he'd tell you why. He was probably right, but if you had a good answer, he'd accept it.”

While they were still just in junior high school, Guy and Rich Snyder went to work at the track, too. They did odd jobs like running
the elapsed time slips to the racers or cleaning up trash around the track. “They weren't spoiled little kids running around like you'd expect, being the owner's sons,” Gibbs recalled. “They were good kids. I never had to get too hard on them. They did their work. That's the way I remember them. The Snyders had a strong work ethic and I think they wanted that for their boys too.”

Intense, dogmatic, and hardworking—this is how Harry Snyder is invariably described. At the same time, he displayed an unwavering sense of decency. “When we had a good race he'd give us bonuses,” recalled Gibbs. “He was very conscientious about being fair to customers. You saw that at In-N-Out, and at the track, too. I remember one time we put on this big event that was above and beyond the weekly races, and it was costly. We had to raise ticket prices. Harry agonized over this. At the time, tickets cost $2 for a Saturday night, and he had to go up to $2.50 or $3. It sounds like peanuts now, but then it was a big decision. Harry settled on $2.50. He didn't want to be too hard on the weekly regular customers, and he felt that $3 was too big a jump. Besides, we were already making good money.” Gibbs added, “I really respected him. He was a good, solid businessman, and he treated people well and tried to do the right thing.”

Perhaps as a result of Harry's brief flirtation with communism and his disgust with economic inequity, he always exhibited a soft spot for those in need. He had a real eye for potential and took a special interest in developing those individuals who worked for him. While Steve Gibbs managed the raceway, Harry paid for him to take a Dale Carnegie course. (Carnegie, of course, was the early American guru of self-improvement, salesmanship, and corporate training, and the author of perennial best seller
How to Win Friends and Influence People.
) “He was always trying to make things better,” recalled Gibbs. “I was a blue-collar guy. You know he didn't have to that.”

It was during this time that Harry Snyder met Paul Althouse at the burly dragster's San Dimas shop—Harry was impressed enough to make him an offer. Althouse (husband of Valerie Althouse, another Dale dragster) had grown up in the trailer parks of Baldwin Park and on In-N-Out burgers. By the time he met Harry, the veteran Southern
California racer and master of the four-speed had also made a name for himself fixing cars and building innovative street hot rods that were fast and affordable. The '65 Chevelle he built for Geno Redd was one of the first to have a 375-horsepower 396-engine; the Chevelle went on to set a record time of 11.54 seconds, and win a major race at the Lions Dragstrip in 1965.

Every three or four months, Harry made an appearance at Althouse's shop to have some work done. Their initial interactions were simple enough. “At first, I didn't even know who he was,” Althouse claimed. “I knew the boys who worked at the track.” Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, a teenaged Guy Snyder came to him and said, “My dad wants to talk to you.” The two men knew each other slightly at best, but Harry asked Althouse if he would like to open a Tuneup Masters on his property. “He offered to finance it 100 percent,” said Althouse. It was an extraordinary opportunity, and Althouse was as surprised as he would have been if he had been told he'd won the lottery. Still, he chose to decline the offer. “I told him it sounds like a good deal to a point, but to be perfectly honest, I don't have the education to do it and do it properly. He very much appreciated that.” Nevertheless, Althouse remained within the Snyder family's orbit for several decades after that first meeting in the family's living room. Said Althouse, “Harry was the kind of man that if he believed in you, there was nothing he wouldn't have done.”