Town Topic Hamburgers in Kansas City / Photo by Richard Yost – Editing by John Fraim

Brand New Day / Jonathan Butler (Top 25 Gospel Praise Songs)

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By John Fraim

I don’t think many have friends who travel as much as my great, old friend Rich. After many years as a practiced massage therapist he’s become a very successful insurance adjuster for a number of major insurance companies. He is consistently their number one salesman. After struggling with the computer system for awhile, he was helped along by a good friend and computer whiz.

At first, it was nearby areas. But then, he was going all over the nation. He was even out in California for the terrible Paradise fire that destroyed the entire town.

The company pays for a rental car. The company gets incredible rates on rental cars and SUVs. There is a lot of driving on many of his trips. He’s been writing and sending photos of the different places he likes. Rich’s favorites are off the old beaten path. They are original places, the vanishing cafes and restaurants of America.

About six months ago, Rich got a new iPhone 15 Pro. Since then, he has sent back via message some stunning photos of his travels. He is getting better and better with framing his shots. He got back from Florida a few months ago. His travels are getting better and better.

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This morning a saw the above photo (among others) as a message on my iPhone. I downloaded the photos. Taken with Rich’s iPhone 15 Pro camera during what is known as the “magic hour” for photography: the early light of the morning or the early twilight of the evening. The light does have a unique quality to it during this time. The time that Rich took the above photo, framed so well, with the two women inside looking out at the viewer. And, what is that Ferris Wheel on the right side of the photo?

I took the photo from his iPhone and put it into my Photomatix Pro 6 software where I had much control over the colors and sharpness and other qualities of the photo. It was an interesting collaboration with Rich on these photos. He would send me the original photos of the places he visited while on his insurance adjuster travels. And often text about his travels. The photos became stunning as he got more into photography (landscape photography I would say) and got better and better at it.

I started posting to my website the photo and usually a little story behind it. Then, I started posting some of these to the social media site NextDoor Neighbor. The posts reached into the thousands around the nation as I sent it out nationally. The below is a recent place traveled to by Rich. Usually, some historic icon. Rich carefully researches the places he goes to, knows where all the famous little places that no one has heard of before, except the locals.

Here, it is an iconic hamburger place in Kansas City. Rich had a few other photos outside the restaurant. He had a few inside at the counter. I continued to read up on Town Topic over the Internet. A little-known Town Topic fact: Elizabeth Taylor was a fan of Town Topic chili! The story was told to us by Town Topic customer Cal, whose uncle was a top employee at TWA in Kansas City. The story goes that in 1969 Liz Taylor had someone from Avis Rental Car drive to Town Topic to pick up chili for her, and bring it to her private jet at Kansas City Municipal Airport.

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Town Topic Hamburgers is one of Kansas City’s most iconic — and long-lasting — burger joints opened during the Depression era and survived the lean war years of the 1940s: Town Topic. Two former White Castle employees, Claude Sparks and Heywood Billings, opened the first Town Topic Sandwich Shop at 2442 Broadway in 1937. The entrepreneurs were forthcoming about modeling their burger venture after their former employer. “We tried to pattern it exactly after White Castle,” Sparks told The Kansas City Star in 1984.

This included selling hamburgers for a nickel apiece, 24 hours a day, and offering coupons to entice new customers. At a time when other hamburger operations were closing, Town Topic added a second location at 11 E. Linwood Blvd. in 1939 and a third at 2021 Broadway in 1944.

Employees banquet, White Castle System, Dec. 18, 1932.

The Ambassador Hotel. Claude Sparks’s (is fourth on the left)

Perhaps one critical key to Sparks success was his period working for the company that was started in nearby Wichita, Kansas and where he worked for when he started out.

The above shows the young Claude Sparks at a 1932 White Castle employee Christmas banquet in Kansas City. It looks to be some board of directors of a bank. The serious of the young men around the table. After all, they were involved in that serious business of starting the fast food business. But at the same time, it looked to be a fancy banquet for them all.

Claude moved to Kansas City from Golden, Missouri and worked as a cab driver before starting at White Castle. This paved the way for him to start Town Topic Hamburgers. Claude was just 24 years old in the above picture. Five years later, he would open his first Town Topic in 1937.

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While Spark’s and Billings’s partnership dissolved soon after, Sparks continued to grow the franchise, opening three new locations by 1955. The last shop opened in 1987 on Johnson Drive in Mission, Kansas.

The Counter at Town Topic / Photo Rich Yost & Edited by John Fraim

Town Topic continues to sell burgers by the bagful at its historic Baltimore and Broadway locations, a vestige of the simple hamburger stands of the 1930s and ’40s. White Castle returned to Kansas City in 1985 but pulled out of the market in 2001. It is now headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Loyal fans of the franchise continue to lobby for its return and crave its signature sliders by the sack.

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And, as for White Castle, might the company be behind much of the above hamburger success story? As well as the national hamburger success story? Town Topic, on a smaller scale than White Castle, but modeled on the same ideas and principles learned while Claude Sparks worked for them.

Founded on September 13, 1921, in Wichita, Kansas, White Castle has been generally credited as the world’s first fast-food hamburger chain. It is known for its small, square hamburgers referred to as “sliders.” The burgers were initially priced at five cents until 1929 and remained at 10 cents until 1949. In the 1940s, White Castle periodically ran promotional ads in local newspapers which contained coupons offering five burgers for ten cents, takeout only. In 2014, Time named the White Castle slider “The Most Influential Burger of All Time.”

Old Sign in the Parking Lot of Town Topic / Painted by the original Coke artist

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NOTES & ADDITIONS

Town Topics Web Site

The Folger Shakespeare Library focus on 1932 in music is an excellent list of the music a young 24 year old Sparks working for White Castle might have listened to.

Claude Sparks at another one of his original three Town Topic KC restaurants

Unknown Artist

(Saving in brilliant colors the orange rust of the past?)

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Best burgers in Missouri from Food & Wine – 2021

“Restaurants typically come and go like clouds in the sky, but since 1937, Kansas City has been able to depend on Town Topic, the iconic little diner at 20th and Broadway. At any hour, on any day of the week, you can come here, and you should. Fresh beef is pressed so thoroughly onto the flat top you can practically see through it, with liberal amounts of onions pressed on top of that (so the two cook together), lots of seasoning, and—boom—you’ve got another great, pre-trend smash burger. Once one of America’s great burger towns, things have changed considerably in the last couple of decades, and Town Topic, which used to have locations all over town, now runs a decidedly smaller operation. But the original is still here, and if generations of locals have a say in the matter, it won’t be going anywhere, anytime soon.”

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Town Topic Carries on the Legacy of a Long Line of Berger Places in KC

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Town Topic / CD Released Nov 24, 2009

The CD “Town Topic” was released on enneagramrecords.com. It was produced by Max Berry, a long time Kansas City musical icon, and guitarist who plays on many of the tracks. If you love Kansas City, there are other songs that are centered in this town that has more talented blues and jazz musicians than about anywhere else in the world. You can purchase this, or a copy of my latest “Easyville -American Stories” direct from the label website, CD baby, or I tunes. I would appreciate any positive comments as this raises my scores on the musical charts that include Reverbnation. Thanks to all who helped in the production of this fun work! I hope you enjoy it. Cheers, and bottoms up!!!

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