Photos by Don Petersen | Special to The Roanoke Times

Nostalgic Lendy's patrons line up for its famous food at one of its original locations on Williamson Road.

Star City Motor Madness Cruisers jam Williamson Road.

The hamburger patties sizzled on the grill, seven or eight across and five deep, kicking up smoke under the white shelter.

Friday afternoon, at the seventh annual Lendy's Again Cruise-In Night, just off Williamson Road Northwest, cooks spread cheese and lettuce and special sauce across bread, put together Lendy sandwiches known as Buddy Boys and Longfellas, and served up small scoops of the establishment's infamous strawberry pie.

Connie Francis' voice emanated from nearby speakers: twin 1960 hits -- "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" then "Where the Boys Are," followed by Dion and the Belmonts.

The line of hungry customers stretched back 50 feet or more and beyond them, in the street, was a similar single-file line of bumper-to-bumper cars, many bearing the white-on-black license plates of antiques:

A deep blue '37 Chevrolet. A cherry-red '66 Shelby Cobra. A spotless turquoise Trans-Am. A '68 Camaro, beelike with its black stripes against its bright yellow body. And more sparkling Corvettes and Mustangs than one could count.

And the cars, like the proverbial hits, just kept on coming.

The yearly event pays tribute to all these things and to the long-gone but much-beloved Lendy's restaurants, some 23 in all that dotted Southwest Virginia and during the 1960s and '70s, attracted teenagers in literal droves.

A last-minute mechanical problem prevented the event's organizers from using the kitchen of the King Buffet restaurant, which is the site of an original Lendy's. So, they hung a canvas tarp out front, set up some portable grills and cooked outside in the sunny, late afternoon heat that was made humid by rain earlier in the day.

"It would've been really tough having a storm and trying to do this," Chick Rakes said, sounding grateful.

Back in the day, Rakes, 64, was a Lendy's manager. He drove a 1963 Corvette then and said he's owned more than a dozen since then. He was one of the people behind the grill Friday.

"It was something similar to this, years ago," he said as he took a break to watch the sparkling traffic stream past.

"This was the hangout. Friends were everywhere. Police were here, but they did that for show. It was more of a safe time."

Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt County, sponsors the yearly celebration and he later echoed Rakes' sentiment.

"This was the hangout. It happened right here," he said, pointing down at a concrete rise in the parking lot of the King Buffet Restaurant. "This was the walkway for the wait folks."

Some 40-odd years ago, Smith -- behind the wheel of a 1955 Chevrolet -- was one of the kids who cruised back and forth from the Williamson Road Lendy's to the other locations on Franklin Road, Lee Highway and over to the one in Salem where Lakeside Amusement Park used to stand.

Bruce Oliver grew up in Roanoke and had equally fond memories of that route which, back then, he usually took in his 1961 Chevrolet Impala.

"Yeah, we used to cruise from one [Lendy's] to the other," he recalled. "There were other places. But these were the spots to go. And that little strawberry pie, they're the best in the world."

Crowds gathered up and down Northwest Williamson Road to watch the cruisers. Among them was Twig Gravely, who operates the Web site Old Roanoke, was a little too young to experience the heyday as a teen but still feels nostalgia for the period, which he said ran more or less from 1960 to 1970.

Lendy's, Gravely said, "was before all the cheapy fast food, a little more upscale. If you pulled in and parked, you were expected to tip."

As the line for Lendy burgers drew smaller, Tommy and Velma Powell waited their turn. They showed up, Velma said, for "a Longfella, strawberry pie and a drink."

They, too, used to cruise the old routes -- in Tommy's '55 Chevy -- but now they live nearby and they showed up to the cookout on foot to avoid the congestion.

"Yeah, we've done that," Velma said, nodding toward the seemingly endless line of cars that, even toward dusk, still rumbled up Williamson Road.