Les Jones

Food & Drink > Only Eight Howard Johnsons Left

The last Howard Johnson's in Maine just closed. HoJoLand lists the survivors (they haven't updated the list to remove the Maine location). The Vermont HoJo is scheduled to close next month, leaving seven. The old stores will become HoJo ghosts.

I'm barely old enough to remember when HoJos were more common. I ate at them a couple of times on the road as a kid. Was there one in Knoxville near West Town Mall? I think so. There was a HoJo in Gatlinburg until 15, 20 years ago.

The last time I saw a Howard Johnson's was in Manhattan on our honeymoon. We saw it and ran in for breakfast one morning. After looking at the terrible condition of the place, and the filthy menus, we got up and left. It's amazing how a once-powerful chain can degenerate so quickly.

In one of Kurt Vonnegut's sci-fi short stories he mentions HoJos in passing. In the story there are suicide centers set up for people who want to end their lives, and the centers all have purple roofs. They're always built next to HoJos, which have orange roofs, so that people can have a last meal and a dish of ice cream. When Vonnegut wrote his futuristic story I don't think he expected to see the end of HoJos in his lifetime.