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After hearing last night's All Things Considered story on the 

closing of one of the last Howard Johnson's

, we were a little bummed today when we went searching for an image of the last one with an orange roof.

It's this one in Lake George, N.Y. Look just beyond the sewage truck, and thanks, Google Maps.

If you're my age, you probably have a Howard Johnson's memory. For me, it was halfway between Boston and the city where I grew up. I took my grandmother to Red Sox games and we'd stop in Concord, Mass., at the HoJo. She had a thing for the scallops.

Back in the '80s, a group of guys who played APBA baseball -- cops, state legislators, media types -- gathered every third Saturday to play the dice baseball game. Eventually, they shut it down and turned the joint into a Ground Round. You knew Howard Johnson's was on borrowed time when a Ground Round was how you improved it.

Back in the day, a Howard Johnson's on the horizon was the only thing that prevented dad from following through on his promise to pull the car over right there. You kids wouldn't understand.

Colleague Paul Tosto, who today admitted working at a Ground Round (a post for another day, perhaps) reports that the night before the Watergate burglary, the "plumbers" stayed at a Howard Johnson's across from the Watergate hotel.

The death of Howard Johnson's is the worst kind: long and slow. It started its decline because of World War II. The company tried to diversify by opening up motels in the 1960s, but the Arab Oil Embargo in the '70s helped finish off that idea. People stopped driving to get to places far away. Heck, nowadays, few people can recite the nursery rhyme that inspired its signage.

There are only three left now, NPR reported last evening -- Lake Placid (which is closing), Bangor, Maine, and Lake George.

“We had one guy who drove all the way from Maine on Friday — nine hours each way — just to have fried clams,” the manager of the Lake Placid Howard Johnson's said. That's not good news for the Bangor location.

 left. The one behind the sewer truck, and it doesn't look all that healthy.

 reports today that the HoJo restaurant there looks like it's about to close, too.

Even if the brand survives in Bangor, the only remaining 

 one left. The one in Maine doesn't have an orange roof.

"Nostalgia is part sadness and loss, it is part great memories and good change," reporter Brian Mann said in his story yesterday.

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

There's only one Howard Johnson's restaurant left in the country now. And it doesn't appear to be on solid footing.

Feeling blue over the orange roof

Go Deeper.

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