Jackson Bell Burgers won’t be the only...

Jackson Bell

Burgers won’t be the only fare being dished out today at Bob’s Big

Boy -- diners can feast on a book about the well-known chain.

Christian Hansen, a former employee who started as a dishwasher

and moved up to board member, is selling and signing copies of his

book, “The Big Boy Story,” at noon today at the restaurant at 4211 W.

Riverside Drive.

The Bob’s story starts in 1937 in Glendale with an ambitious

lunch-stand operator named Bob Wain who came up with the double-deck

hambur- ger, but was at a loss for names, referring to it as “the

special.”

As legend has it, it wasn’t until Richard Woodruff, a plump

6-year-old boy who performed small tasks around the stand in exchange

for the sandwich, provided Wain his much-needed inspiration.

“Momentarily forgetting his name, Bob called out to him, ‘Hey, big

boy,’ and that is how the name started,” Hansen said. “He then had a

cartoonist draw him as the original Big Boy.”

The Big Boy, that newly christened double-deck hamburger, was the

impetus that built the coffee shop empire called Big Boy Restaurants

of America, according to the book. It tells the rise of the company

to what Hansen considers its fall, when Wain sold it to the Marriott

Corp. in 1967.

“Bob was a superstar, I mean he was as big as Clark Gable,” he

said. “He was the most respected food-service operator in the country

and when he left, Big Boy Restaurants was the fourth-largest

food-service business in the country.”

Retired and living in Camarillo, Hansen began his Bob’s Big Boy

tenure as a dishwasher in 1946 at the now-closed San Fernando

Boulevard location. He worked there on-and-off until 1959, when he

became vice president of marketing and a board member of the Big Boy

Franchises, Inc. for nine years.

A friend of Wain, Hansen began the book by interviewing him in

1970.

After 32 years, he published it five weeks ago and has already

sold about 600 copies to former employees and customers.

“I wanted to do it as a history book with quotes from Bob and to

have a few sassy comments about McDonalds and the marginal quality

[of replications of the double-deck hamburger],” he said.