“Sweet Tea, Cheeseburgers and a Bit of History”

Dec 31, 2009, 9:18 AM

Article about Mac that I wrote for t-net some 8 years ago ...
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“I can’t do that now,” he said, peering at me over his thick glasses. “The basketball team is about to play … Most people know everything about me already, and I’ve done told enough lies today. Come back later.”

“Yeah, okay. Super,” I mumbled to myself as I walked out to my car, white-knuckling my micro-recorder. This was my first go at interviewing Mac McKeown, and my timing would be just as bad on my next try. “You just keep coming at the worst times, man,” Pat Hunter keenly observed during my next visit. “Try it when we’re not so busy – he’ll talk to you.”

Now, after three trips from Greenville and three cheeseburger plates – Hey, who’s complaining? – my luck changes, and I finally manage to nail the old rascal down at nine o’clock on a Wednesday night. The crowd’s died down a bit, and Mac chuckles, “Guess I’ve put you off long enough … what do you want to know?”

Mac’s Drive-In opened in 1956, when a younger Mac, a Chester native and Clemson student, set up shop on the Pendleton Highway just a few miles from campus. “I worked for Dan Gentry at his place downtown [where TD’s is now], and I was getting ready to finish Clemson. He said, ‘Mac, go on out there and try it – see how it goes.’ I went to the bank and borrowed $800, and he signed for it … that’s all it took in those days: $800.”

The previous owner had moved an old Atlanta-by-way-of-Fairplay trolley car to that spot some years earlier. Mac and Dan purchased it and the land it was on to open their new drive-in, and the rest is history: “I was in that thing for about nine years. Every time it rained, it leaked. All the time,” he laughs. “We couldn’t ever get it to stop leaking.”

When I interrupt and ask about his days as a Clemson student, he recalls: “I first came to Clemson in ’48, and I got drafted right after my first year. The next year, I went off to Korea and did that for two years. When I came back, I went back to school and started working for Dan.” Mac received his degree in engineering the same year he opened his restaurant.

“We did a heckuvalot of curb service back then, and the curb service stayed pretty good ‘til they started making automobiles too small,” he remembers. “During Jimmy Carter’s gas wars [in the ‘70s], people started buying all those little Japanese cars, and they couldn’t get their whole families in those things.”

These days, Mac still comes in every day, though he says he doesn’t own the place anymore, “No, not really … I signed the place over to Ted Hunter [Pat’s father], who’d come to work for me when I first opened. He was still in high school. I got rid of all the headaches. He’d worked for me a long time, so I just turned it over to him … thought I owed it to him.”

The week before this interview, I heard on the radio that Ted had been admitted to the Anderson hospital, but Mac assures me, “He’s fine now … at home and doing okay. Yeah, he’s been with me a long time,” he says, his eyes scanning the window behind me. “And I guess he’s kind of like my son.”

As you’d no doubt guess, Mac has seen his share of characters over the years. In fact, many regulars would tell me I’m talking to the joint’s number one character right now. Mac affirms this opinion when I ask him if he’s had many famous customers over the years: “Famous people? Hrmp. All my customers are famous! Some are just more famous than others, that’s all,” a shrug of his shoulders emphasizes the last two words.

Over the years, most of those “more famous” customers have been Clemson athletes like Gary Barnes, Buddy Gore, Dwight Clark, Vance Hammond, and Will Merritt. The litany of signed photographs on the back wall proves this. It’s a testament to Mac that a lot of those guys come by for a bite to eat even today – some of them more frequently than others. “I’ve got a bunch of ‘em,” he says with a grin. “Every time I turn around, they’re here … If they’re going up 85, they’ll come in and see us. They don’t forget, and some of ‘em have been coming here for 35 years. When they step in that door, I still know ‘em by name.”

“I had one guy,” he says, “who used to come here all the time, but hadn’t been in 30 years or so. Well, he finally came back one day and hollered at me, and I asked him, ‘Where the hell you been?’ He said, ‘Mac, I’ve been all over the world, and I came back to Clemson to retire and get a me cheeseburger.’”

I can only imagine the general commotion that would go on at Mac’s each day after practice back in the ‘70s, with players from both sides of the ball saddling up on the old vinyl stools, gobbling down food, and drinking gallons of sweet tea. “When the Bostic Boys and all of ‘em were here, we’d let ‘em sit in the front and make everybody else stand,” he says with a grin. “And when they’d come in, I’d ask ‘em, ‘Who won the practice today?’ They had a lot of competitions between the offense and defense in those days, and they’d get real quiet when I asked that because they didn’t like getting beat by the defense and didn’t want anybody to know about it … yeah, the defense was pretty #### good back then.”

Thinking about those days stirs up Mac a little: “Yeah. They don’t really get to practice like that anymore,” he laments. “A hard day or two of practice made football players out of those boys, but the NCAA won’t let ‘em do it nowadays.” A little closer to home are the rule changes over the last 25 years that infringe on his developing tight relationships with today’s players. Relationships like the one he still has with Jim Stuckey, who fondly recalls his recruiting visit to Clemson: “They took me to Mac’s Drive-In, and I sat at the counter, drank sweet tea out of those old Coca-Cola glasses, and had a double-cheeseburger. I’ve been to many fine restaurants since, and that is still my favorite place. Mac is a special, special man in my life.”

“Yeah, I might have given ‘em [players] a cheeseburger or something back in those days, but now [the school’s] afraid to let too many of ‘em come down here. They’re afraid I may give somebody a hotdog or something. I don’t get it. They won’t let you do that or give somebody a ride downtown or anything – the NCAA just won’t let you do anything nice like that. Who really gets hurt? The players do. I just want to say, ‘It’s my #### hotdog, and I’ll give it to whoever I want to give it to.’ But, I know I can’t do that.”

Players and NCAA regulations aren’t the only things that have changed over the years, he admits: “The kids today … they’ve changed a little, I guess. They’re a lot more serious than we were. It’s a lot more competitive these days. [The higher academic requirements] are good for the school in some ways, but they hurt Clemson, too, and it’s not the way it used to be. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a person with a high SAT, but they still need to get some of those good, old regular folks in there, too.” He hesitates a second and grins, “Like me, I’d never be able to get in there now.” This statement gives me pause. “Neither would I,” I tell him.

The longer I talk to Mac, the more I realize that he isn’t opposed to sharing opinions about how he sees things. Take Coach Ford’s parting with Clemson almost 15 years ago: “When you get somebody like that, doing the things he was doing, you don’t run him off. You find a way to work with him. I mean, I know he was stubborn and all that stuff, but you can’t be a coach and not be stubborn.”

As is usually the case at Mac’s, the topic of football sparks a debate, and this is no exception. “Well,” the fellow sitting next to me chimes in, “If Danny’d behaved himself, he’d probably still be here today.” Mac answers with nod, “Then, you jerk him up, and you say, ‘Hey! Behave yourself!’ There was a better way to handle all that stuff – that’s what I’m talking about.’” The customer smiles at his glass of tea, nods, and that’s that.

This is the kind of stuff – this neighborly atmosphere and friendly ribbing – that contributed to Mac’s getting the Order of the Palmetto (South Carolina’s highest honor) a few years back. However, he’s quick to point out that then-Governor David Beasley or the Peeler Boys probably had a lot to do with his nomination. “All that was real nice,” he admits, “But you know what’s really the best thing about running this place?”

I look at this 70-something-year-old man, scan the old brick walls, and think for a few seconds. All I can come up with is that he gets all the free cheeseburgers he wants. “The people,” he says. “Especially the young people. They come in, and some of them are a long ways from home. We just try to make ‘em feel at home and talk to ‘em like they’ve always been coming in here. Treat people like they’re ordinary folks, and they’ll respond like that.”

I then turn the conversation to the present state of the football team, and Mac has an idea or two about that as well: “Sad shape, if you want to know the truth,” Mac offers as he leans over the Formica counter. “We’re a long way from where we were and where we should be … we’ve really got a lot of work to do, and we’ve got to start with that defense – all that fancy offense won’t work without it.”

“That’s all you need,” he says then, extending his hand and offering a friendly smile. “If it’s not enough, you can just make the rest of it up.” I laugh to myself – the hard part won’t be making stuff up; it’ll be deciding what to leave out. I take one last swig from my glass of tea and tell Mac to have a good night. “They’re all good nights,” he waves. “Some better than others. Come back.”

On my way back to Greenville, I ride in silence for 15 minutes or so, thinking about the conversation I just had with Mac and wondering why I waited 10 years to do that. I reach over, rewind the micro-recorder, and listen to the old man talk, his low voice barely audible above the clanging of pots and pans and orders echoing off the walls. “This is going to be hard to filter,” I say out loud. Then, as if on cue, I hear, “There ain’t nothing about me that most people don’t know already.” And that laugh follows – follows me all the way home.

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Hüsker Dü, man.

“Sweet Tea, Cheeseburgers and a Bit of History”

Great comment on the SAT scores. I totally understand

Last year when they had the Bassmasters' Classic in G'Ville

This is quite an amazing leap........

Neither could I my friend..but SATs can't measure creativity

Re: “Sweet Tea, Cheeseburgers and a Bit of History”

lot a wisdom there..thanks for posting*******

Re: “Sweet Tea, Cheeseburgers and a Bit of History”

You are a wonderful story teller

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