Five bucks for the meal; nostalgia is free

Bored with the same old mall Santas?

Tired of the typical department store tinsel?

Take it from Doug. An unexpected feel-good spectacle awaits you this Christmas shopping season in downtown Spokane.

Step inside 4 Seasons Coffee, 222 N. Howard. Feast your eyes on a cherry red blast from the Baby Boomer past.

Wonder of wonders! It’s a Victor Kooler-Grill made for the Coca-Cola Corporation in 1954.

Talk about eye candy.

This is the holy grill of hot dog hawking. The elaborate “luncheonette” unit, states the promotional literature, was created as a “turn key” snack bar operation for five-and-dime stores and movie houses.

The grill came with the state-of-the-art features of the time such as: stainless steel dog rollers, built-in bun steamer and chili pot, matching cash register and enough gleaming chrome to trim a vintage Caddy.

Coke aficionados will love the fact that this is not reproduction cola kitsch.

It’s the real thing.

Tube steak devotees and lunchtime value seekers will appreciate the quality all-beef hot dog in a poppy seed bun, basket of kettle chips and genuine bottle of Coke that can be had for just five bucks. That hot dog, by the way, is a Cloverdale. It’s the same frank you can chomp at a Mariner’s game.

“Nothing represents America better than a Coke and a hot dog,” says Ron Lende, the proud owner of this working museum piece.

Former Spokane residents, Lende and his wife, Janis, now live in North Dakota. They came here to visit family members for the holidays and decided to haul their 928-pound grill, which packs away in a trailer Ron had specially built for it.

The couple arranged a deal with 4 Seasons Coffee and began selling hot dogs there last week.

Since buying the Victor Kooler-Grill from a collector four years ago, the Lendes have used it to sell concessions at county fairs and special events. At a Fargo car show, boasts Lende, the mere presence of his grill was responsible for boosting attendance by 1,000 gawkers.

I believe him. These babies don’t run in herds.

Of the five Victor Kooler-Grills known to be in existence, Lende says his is the only one still cranking out dogs. All the others are squirreled away in private collections. Not even the Coke museum in Atlanta has one, he adds.

That Lende ended up with his was a stroke of good fortune.

Purchased for $1,700 in 1955, the grill was a fixture at the municipal auditorium in Minot, N.D. There it stayed until 1991, although the last hot dog was cooked on it back in the 1960s.

The grill was sold in 1991 for $5 in a public auction.

“They couldn’t get a bid,” says Lende.

Lende won’t say what he paid the collector for it. However, he did indicate that the price was significantly less than the 50 grand he was once offered for it.

Of course, the grill wasn’t always in such immaculate condition. Lende devoted much of one winter restoring the piece. A search led him to upstate New York, where he located the original revolving halo sign.

In the process, Lende has become perhaps the world’s leading authority on the Victor Kooler-Grill.

The man can spout statistics and minutia about the grill’s history and the company that constructed it. His Web site at www.victorkoolergrill.com is worth a look. It offers color photographs, music and a video TV news interview with a woman who worked the grill back in the day.

“After four years I don’t get tired of it,” says Lende. “I’m still amazed at it.”

Looking at Lende’s centerpiece gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. It triggered a childhood memory of my dad taking me to a soda fountain to get my first fountain Coke, made with real syrup and carbonated water.

Lende doesn’t have a soda fountain. But it’s still cool to find someone selling Coke in bottles.

He’s done a great job of creating a little nostalgic nook inside 4 Seasons. The luncheonette is accompanied with a large “Fountain Service” Coke sign from the 1930s, a bullet-shaped red Coke wastebasket and cardboard stand-ups of Santa and Marilyn Monroe.

He could use a supply of Diet Coke, my beverage of choice. But that’s a small complaint.

My advice is to hurry downtown and take a gander at this before it’s too late.

Before, as B.B. King would say, the grill is gone.

“It was meant to attract attention and sell Coca-Cola,” says Lende. “And it still does both really well.”