Telstar Snack Bar
A journey back to childhood . . . My grandfather, Jack Coker (1905-2002), owned this snack bar from approximately 1961 to 1965. I don't remember the name back then, but my dad said he thought it was the Telstar[1] Snack Bar—it was definitely Telstar something. I don't remember the outside of this building as much as I remember the inside. Jack would often take me to work with him, both at the phone company[2] and at this little place. At the time Jack ran this place, I was small enough that I used to sit on the counter inside and dip ice cream cones and frozens bananas in chocolate syrup and crushed nuts. I'm sure that would violate at least 38 different health codes nowadays! In the early 60s, people didn't care. They thought the three- or four-year-old boy serving stuff was cute.
Jack "invented" the frozen banana. Wikipedia, in the article Frozen Bananas, says, "In real life, frozen bananas are a tradition on Balboa Island." Frozen banana signs can be seen everywhere around Balboa. I'm positive that Jack wasn't the first person in history to ever freeze a banana, but I've always heard that he was the first to put it on a popsicle stick, dip it in chocolate and nuts, and serve it commercially.
[1] Jack worked for AT&T/Pacific Telephone for 48 years. (The company had several names during that time.) The snack bar was a side business for Jack. AT&T launched the first communications satellite, Telstar, in the early 1960s. The snack bar was named after the satellite.
[2] At one time Jack's job was to patrol the telephone lines across the desert between Barstow, CA, and Las Vegas, NV. When Jack took me with him to his phone company job, we would climb the telephone poles and he would tie a rope around my waist and tie me to the cross arm so I wouldn't fall off. I'd sit there and watch him work while he told me stories and jokes and we talked about stuff all day. I'm sure that would violate plenty of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulations nowadays.
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