OK, I’ll admit it: my family may not be like any family you know. After all, how many families do you know that have a four-feet-tall fiberglass Bob’s Big Boy living in their den? Hopefully, just one.
Bob used to live in the garage, keeping an eye on my prized car. He’d come in the house every Christmas as part of our holiday festivities. I gift-wrapped five sides of a box that slips over the burger he’s holding so it looks like he’s carrying a gift. In the summer, he would go out on the lawn, but only under supervision.
Then, a couple of years ago, in the aftermath of Christmas and New Years, Ethan asked if “his brother” could stay in the den instead of returning to the cold garage. So, like the man who came to dinner, he never went back to his original home.
How Bob came to live with us is an interesting story (at least to us). The story starts back in the mid-1970s when Sue was a waitress (a “Bob’s Big Girl”) at a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in her hometown of Cherry Hill, N.J. When I first met her in the late ‘80s one of her prized possessions (besides her Bonnie Raitt albums) was a faux-wood nameplate from Bob’s with her name on it. So it was not a stretch that we started buying plastic Bob’s banks when we saw them during our forays into antique stores. We’d drop $5 here and there for the banks no matter the condition. Soon our basketball team became a baseball team became a football team became a small town. There were several types according to the years.
Flash forward to 1992. We met a local antique dealer named Artie Robbins. Over a few years we purchased an array of Bob’s memorabilia from his store on Highway 101 in Leucadia. Then one day, there was a message on the phone. To the uninformed, it sounded like a drug deal: “Ah, it’s Artie. You guys better get down here. Man, I got some stuff I think you’re gonna like. It’s big.”
When we arrived, there they were: six “lobby” Bobs (the “rooftop” Bobs are taller) standing in the back lot of his store. He was already building two “coffins” for a pair that had been bought by some collector in Japan. Well, Artie’s timing was serendipitous as Sue had just gotten a bonus at work. So before we left his shop that day, we were carefully fitting a big Bob into the back of our 4Runner.
While many people would be horrified at the price, let me just say that when the first “Austin Powers” movie came out five years later, our “investment” tripled overnight. I’ve seen similar Bobs on eBay for five times what we paid. That’s why I only polish him with the best Megauirs car polish and wax I use on my car.
Bob loves to get in the spirit of the holidays. Last year for our Halloween party, our friend Mark Brown did up Bob in spiders and cobwebs to go with the lights Sue had already adorned him with. This year he came to the party (or really, the party came to him) as a mummy, wrapped in toilet paper. We have a specially wrapped box that I slip over his hamburger every Christmas so it looks like he’s delivering gifts.
Bob remains a cherished member of the family. He’s so popular every time people come to visit, we take their picture with Bob and add it to the “Wall of Bob” in the hallway to Ethan’s room. There’s quite a collection. C’mon over sometime, we’ll add to it.
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