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A long long time ago in an IE that was a lot different than it is today, there were little places along the roadside that have since grown with popularity.

One little franchise that I remember starting out as a young woman selling tamales out the back of her station wagon. She had her kids do all of the stuffing and sold every weekend. Then we convinced her to start selling over the holidays. In time she had to buy a kitchen and hire more people to make her tamales. That is all she made. Tamales. Beef, Pork and Chicken tamales.

Today she is known as the Tamale Queen and can be found just above the 60 freeway on Mountain Ave in Ontario. Her daughter and granddaughter still run the show and sell nearly 30,000 tamales over the Christmas holidays.

Another little roadside stand that grew to nationwide popularity was know as the Farmers Market down on Central Ave just south of Mission in the old county area of Montclair. Today, the same family owns today's nationwide franchise of 'The Farmers Market' with headquarters in Irvine.

I have mentioned the Cask and Cleaver before but they are an example of another small local restaurant that went big time. In the 70's 80's and early 90's they grew to over 30 stores. In the late 90's they had to cut back, but there are still a number of Cask-N-Cleavers around the state and of course the original is still in Rancho Cucamonga.

Clearmans 'Steer-N-Stein's located on Archibald in Rancho is the original restaurant only slightly removed from its original home located in the old bowling alley on the corner of Foothill and Vineyard. The bowling Alley and the Capri Cai was destroyed in the 1969 floods. (If I have the names wrong it was nearly 40 years ago) I have pictures of the destruction when the Cucamonga Creek swelled to over 2 miles wide and destroyed several homes along Arrow Vineyard and especially where Carnelian splits off from Vineyard. I took 3 pictures with my old 26 Kodak camera, cut them and then pasted them together. It show the last house complete washed away and 3 or 4 garages destroyed. I mentioned all this, because all of this ended up in the Thomas Bros Winery and the Bowling Alley and nearly took out the Red Hill Liquor store, the only buildings on Foothill.

Getting back to the Steer-N-Stein, Clearman bought most of the Northwood's restaurants in the 90's and early 2000 and is still expanding.

gdh