POTD - Cards and Kings

POTD - Cards and Kings

These business cards are actually Whopper Cards, that my Dad used to hand out to people.  I guess they were a business card, but you hoped that they'd turn them in and get a really great sandwich!   

I took this photo in my house and when I hung it on the wall in my entryway I noticed that the King on the Bun was reflected in the glass.  How perfect!   The King hangs in my laundry room smiling his happy smile every time I go by.

If you want to get a brief history of my life with Burger King, read this post.  It pretty much gives the family history in one post. 


Thanks again, Alison, for framing these cards up for me - they look great.

Enjoy!
Kristin

oops!

You always know that you've received a card from my sister Alison if the outside of the envelope has a little drawing on it.  It almost always relates directly to the event or the gift - in this case it was a dead giveaway that my gift was Burger King related somehow.

As soon as I saw this envelope a memory came flooding back.  I had given her a few business cards and asked her if she would frame them for me.  She worked as a framer for a few years and has such an eye when it comes to matting and framing that I love just handing her stuff and asking her to frame it.  I know she'll pick out the perfect frame, the perfect mat, the perfect everything. 

So she did!!!  

I'm so glad that I have a really short memory sometimes because it's so much fun being surprised.

Unfortunately I was even more surprised when I saw this!! 

Oh, I know she'd just have a fit if she saw what had happened.  This is just not the way she expected it to arrive, obviously.   The frame is beautiful and works perfectly with all of the colors in the business cards and that RED!  I love it! 

The business cards did not like their trip through the U.S. Postal Service.  When I talked with Alison she said that she was using a new product (new to her) that was an acid free adhesive and that she went sparingly with it.  So what I'm going to do is take it to a local framer and ask them if they will help me fix it up.  I'd do it myself except that I don't have the special point driver tool to attach the back to the frame.   

Still, I'm so excited.  These business cards are from the early 1970's and one of them has my Dad's name on it and a photo of our very first Burger King (#200) in Lansing, MI.  I can't wait to finally put these up on the wall instead of hidden away in the closet or gasp in a box on the floor or in a storage closet.  They deserve so much more and now they are thisclose to being there :)

Alison, thanks again for such a wonderful gift!  I'll get it fixed up, pronto.
Kristin

Burger King

Growing up, this building was a constant in my life.  I know that through the years the buildings changed and morphed into what we see today, but in my mind, this is the way a Burger King building looks like. You see, my grandfather opened up one of the first Burger Kings in Michigan and expanded until he had 8 stores in the Lansing, MI area.  My entire family worked there in one capacity or another.  This was our family business.

This is the King on a Bun. It may have an official name, but this is way I've always known it. I posted a photo of the King on a Bun that I have in my own home - HERE. He hangs in my laundry room and I smile every day when I see him. I actually don't remember this King in the stores, (in our family the Burger Kings were called stores) but I remember him more being a piece of art, hanging on the walls of family homes.

Now this King I remember. When I was in 2nd grade we did a local Burger King commercial where we had this king suit, which my mother wore, and I came up to the King and was handed a balloon. Then there was type that said come to a special event at these Lansing Burger King locations. When the commercial came out I was a mini celebrity in my classroom for about a day. It was fun.

This is my very favorite Burger King logo.  I really really really dislike the round BK symbol that's used now.  This one will always be the best :)  Gosh, growing up we had all kinds of Burger King logo items.  I think my sisters had more than I did because merchandising changed at some point and more logo items were available, but we had shirts, shoes, clocks, necklaces and even these weird Halloween decorations with a Burger King logo on them.   Those Halloween decorations were so cool.  I don't think a photo of them exists unfortunately.

When my Dad was the manager of one of the stores, this was his business card of sorts.  He used to hand these out all the time.  This is where I got that picture of the store in the first photo (sneaky, huh?!!)  He used to have a whole pile of these cards sitting on his dresser and I used to look at them, count them, pile them into stacks of ten and examining each one.  Who knew that the two that I have now would mean so much to me.  I really should get these framed.  Right now they are in a clear plastic box frame.  They need a frame.  They really do.

A while back I talked about and showed pictures of the Lansing Mall Burger King (here) where I worked as a kid.  Take a look if you haven't seen it before.  It's a hoot.

I hope you have a Fabulous Monday!

Kristin

EDIT EDIT EDIT

My mom scanned the photos from the Green Album

I'm inside - That's my mom :)

Left to right - my sister Alison in the high chair.  The Burger King sign with all of the bicycles lined up.  You'll have to get out your magnifying glasses for that one.
Second row - The store filled to the brim with the deCylces bike riders. (My Aunt Gail is holding my cousin Jody and the dark haired gal next to those two is my cousin Amy.)  My Uncles Matthew and Alan posing in my grandparents backyard.
Bottom row - The deCycles bikes and kids in the backyard.

Burger King

My Grandparents owned a Burger King franchise when I was growing up and it just made sense for me to work there. What I didn't realize was how much I would love being there. I worked in the Lansing Mall Burger King in Lansing, MI. I worked there before we had a food court. I worked there when a Whopper and a large Coke was $3.00. We even had a salad bar at one point. We had one of the best stores, ever!


This is a photo of a few of us that went to the same school. We were placing a Burger King ad in the school yearbook, so we included this picture (or one like it) - I'm the short one. The very short one! Those uniforms were the brown ones with the orangy-yellow stripe. They were polyester and form fitting. I actually looked halfway decent in mine.

This is a picture of me on my 16th birthday. The guy I'm standing next to was the only guy that I ever went out with that I met while at work. (Yes, he has a mustache. LOL I just realized what you all might be seeing.) I remember, he wrote his name and phone number on a tray liner. I was just going on my shift so I asked to be placed in the dining room for a little bit so I could chat with him a bit more. He was just the nicest guy. I found this photo (or rather, it was a photocopy of the original photo - which is still MIA) yesterday in the boxes. I had to post it. We only dated for a few months, but this is by far one of my favorite pictures of all times.

So I was a Burger King gal. I worked there from the age of 14 until I was 18. There was a whole group of us that all worked there for that long. Most of the kids were honor students, too. It was such a different time in the fast food industry. It was one of my favorite jobs ever - and I was a great cashier. I was only put on the other stations if it was an emergency. I was slow as can be. Chatting with the customer and getting the order was my specialty.

Hold the pickle, Hold the lettuce, Special orders don't upset us, All we ask is that you let us, Have it your way.

Kristin

PS - I actually started this post at 11:11! It was a total fluke.

Photo Fun!

I really like Photobucket. I have several accounts, two of them are paid accounts (No ads & lots and lots of storage) and the other few are the free accounts. Those are really nice for sharing photos with friends, without having access to EVERYTHING. If I've taken a photo, chances are I've got it loaded into one of my PB accounts. Well, PB has been revamping the site for quite some time, adding new things, taking out things that didn't quite work, all the while I just ignored a lot of it because I just find graphics, I don't alter them.

Wellllll.... Let me tell you something. The newest edit feature that Photobucket has is FUN! I played with it a bit this evening. Here's what I did. I took an original photo - this one happens to be of the Sitting King - The Burger King logo from the late 50's through the middle 60's. This was one of the Burger Kings that was in one of our original family stores. It now hangs in my laundry room. (Isn't he great?!!)

OK, so here is the original picture, followed by the fun edits I found in the Edit section of my personal PB account. I have placed text on each of the alterations so you would know what I did.

Enjoy!!
Kristin

(10 July 2017 - edit
I am having to edit all my blog posts because photobucket has upped their fees so that in order to continue third party linking, like I have done with all of my photos on this blog, we are forced to pay $39.99 a month.  I am so mad I can hardly stand it, as well as a few thousand others.  So although I wrote this post praising PB, I no longer do.  sigh.)