Veronica's Country Corner

This is so obscure only the blurry 2005 Google Earth image shows it.
I lived in Houston for a little while and because I still had connections in College Station, I drove back and forth from College Station to Houston, and that included a lot of Highway 6 South between Navasota and College Station. That little section of highway used to be notoriously dangerous, as it was a four lane highway with no medians (just a double yellow stripe), and enough hills and little driveways to make it a significant hazard. But for me it was before I was driving and thus nostalgia. Usually the only time we drove on that section was to go to Baton Rouge (ultimately) though Houston too.

I do not lament the passing of the original roadway, though I still can "see" in the minds eye where the exit to FM 159 was, and that was back in 2005 (this is a reference to another one of my old blog posts, though I'm not linking to it). Now, with every thing that goes away, some fond things go away with it. I know that the post up there says "Veronica's", and I promise I'll get to that, but first, an ode to a defunct roadside park.

Despite there being a similar roadside park between Hempstead and Navasota, I do remember vaguely the roadside park in Brazos County. I don't remember much of it, it was literally a little driveway loop off of the southbound side of the road, just south of FM 159. Most of the pavement is actually still there.

Anyway, last week I went to the State Fair and I noticed south of Waxahachie a relatively recent closure of one such roadside park (new barricades, and a construction vehicle parked ominously near the southbound rest area), fresh enough that even Google Earth still had it open. The thing is, as much as there is nostalgia for these things, and I can definitely say that while they were an iconic part of traveling down highways when I was younger just like roadside hotels and restaurants, they are functionally obsolete and to an extent dangerous.

One such park closure in recent years was in Sealy, Texas, with a large road side park in the inner median of Interstate 10 (though the two "halves" did not serve as turnaround lanes). It's not just the fact that people would prefer modern travel centers, restaurants, and gas stations, it's the fact that usually they just breed trouble, with illicit activities and illegal dumping. As for the dangerous part (besides the chance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time) the short ramps make acceleration and deceleration a pain, you would not want to pull out of a parking space for someone to be barreling down the strip at 45 mph or higher. That would suck.

The other thing that disappeared during construction was the only gas station between the Exxon at William D. Fitch (still the furthest south gas station on the freeway) and the gas stations at Washington Avenue. I'm not sure when it was built (after 1995) but if it was before the opening of the Exxon/McDonald's, then the "last gas in Brazos County" would be what was a Texaco at Barron and Highway 6.

Veronica's Country Corner, as health inspection records state (at 26000 State Highway 6 South), was demolished around early 2006, and I remember it being extant at least as of 2001 (I would appreciate more information...) and I want to say that the gas canopy was fairly large (the aerials make it a bit hard to tell). Sadly, because I lack photos, ads, or a lot of meaningful memories of it (I never even stopped there), I can't say much about it, and only want to bring it up to make sure it isn't forgotten. If this topic seems vaguely familiar to you, I did "sort of" cover it on the blog a long time ago, in a now-removed post that covered Millican and the southern end of Wellborn Road.

UPDATE 09-18-2021: Veronica's operated between 2001 and 2005. Today there is "Veronica's Daquiris" on the site, with the same address and ownbership. New labels added. But, there was one more gas station on Highway 6 that I somehow missed...

Goodbye to 711 University, So Long to the BB&T...

Since I didn't get a picture of the bank before it became a big hole in the ground, we'll have to do with this, a picture from Google.

Today this is yet another student housing residential tower, known as Aspire College Station with 16 stories (including parking levels) and 800 beds but when I originally added this article in 2016 (here's the old page before I reworked it) it was the recently-demolished BB&T bank (hence the pun title). The chronology of the main bank building goes as such:

1962: College Station State Bank relocates to this building from a previous location.
1963: The name is changed to University National Bank.
1990: After a long run as University National Bank, it is acquired by Don Adam to become First American Bank (officially acquired that year)
2005: Citigroup acquires the bank chain, rebranded to Citibank
2014: BB&T purchases 41 Citibank branches including this one and rebrands them.
2016: BB&T relocates to The Rise at Northgate; building torn down, thus beginning and ending its life with relocation.

There was a second adjacent space (707 University Drive) which was a two-story office building with a small footprint. My records show this was used for non-bank space as early as 1974 (with the Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co.) and my 1989 phone book mentions "The Personal Computer Store" (with the ad mentioning it was "since 1984"). This became MicroAge by 1993, and starting in 1999 moved out to their current home (now known as Avinext) on East University Drive. I don't think anything has occupied the space since.

Because of the relative underuse of the space, 711 University was also where food trucks congregated (or near the now-defunct Notes-N-Quotes next door). Since I graduated back in 2014, I can't list all the more recent food trucks and trailers there, though here are a few I remember:

Wafology - Seen spring 2014, this was a waffle food truck which had chicken and waffles and a few others. The waffles weren't great, they were more of the standard "using pancake batter in a waffle iron" that I've seen everywhere except for home cooking. I think it returned for fall 2014. It is now known as MESS Waffles, but it doesn't even involve a food truck anymore, they opened a permanent location at Century Square.

Vittles - This was seen summer 2014. It was a trailer operated by Gumby's serving sno-cones, pizza rolls, and chicken legs (the latter two obviously prepared off-site).

Chef Tai's Mobile Bistro - Moved inside campus due to a contract.

Southern Comfort Road Trip - The old Village Foods food truck which in fall 2013, was the new home of Hebert's Cajun Food dishes. Their already-borderline prices had gone up, but it still felt like it was putting the universe one step closer to being back in balance. Sadly it didn't last.

Mr. Chinese Burger - I wanted to like it, but the burgers I had tended to be cold..and they were shut down by the health department at least once.They sold pulled pork on chewy steamed buns.

When the tower was built a few years later, BB&T moved back in and by 2019 it had Fajita Pete's, Which Wich, and All Phone Toys, the last one occupying a small suite facing Church Avenue. Unfortunately, both Fajita Pete's and Which Wich have closed, with Fajita Pete's closing in 2021 and Which Wich closing in late 2023. (Also during this time, BB&T rebranded to Truist, following a merger with SunTrust out of Atlanta). On April 20, 2024, Waco viral hit Roni's Mac Bar opened in Suite 200 (the former Which Wich...and Roni's reused much of their fixtures). It is the first branch location and the first not to be connected to a food hall, which the original is.

UPDATE 04-21-24: Full rewrite was done.
UPDATE 04-24-2024: Should've also mentioned Korean chicken chain bb.q Chicken opened in fall 2023 to replace Fajita Pete's.

Leaning Tower Pizza / Primo Pizza / My Daily Bread Bakery

Primo Pizza in better days, September 2013

Originally I was going to rewrite my old Eastgate page, but then I figured I could easily rewrite it into several posts, not to mention it was several years since I did anything with it.

109 Walton, from my records, seems to have been food related during most of the recent past. "Wing Zone" was here in the early part of the 2000s, records indicate, and during the 1990s it was home to Partners Food Delivery. In 1989, it was "Guitar Shop", which was the actual name of the store and "associated with Holtz Music Company" (ad scan pending). My personal experiences deal with the current tenant and the two before it. First, there was Leaning Tower Pizza, which if I recall was here since the mid-2000s. It was an interesting place, with a particularly greasy pie with a unique cheese pizza. It was also very grimy for a College Station restaurant, but I didn't mind because that's why you have pizza...hot enough to kill any dubious bacteria. It had some garden furniture for an "eat-in" area and had "free delivery" that had a significant discount if you picked it up in store, which means it wasn't actually free at all.

Well, for whatever reason, Leaning Tower closed in spring (May) 2013. Luckily, it was said on MyBCS that Charles Stover, fresh from creating Flip & Peel at Post Oak Mall, had bought the store and recipes and would reopen with a new name and theme. Well, that didn't quite happen, and instead in late summer 2013, Primo Pizza & Rolls opened with an entirely new concept of gourmet takeout pizza, which included pesto on every slice (this opened in late summer 2013). Unfortunately, gourmet takeout pizza without an eat-in area wasn't something the market could handle (especially located in a neighborhood that was populated by college students and minorities) and Primo shut down in February 2014 due to underperformance, but the way it was worded indicated that the closure could be temporary. After all, the sign remained up. But in May 2014, new pictures revealed that the restaurant was gutted. (One more thing regarding Primo: Primo Pizza's webpage, archived in PNG form)

While an Eastgate pizza place was no more than a memory, it did have one more tenant afterwards that opened by fall. This is still open today...My Daily Bread Bakery. This was one of my favorite places in my neighborhood when I lived on Eastgate, cinnamon rolls for breakfast if I was running late for school, decent coffee and espresso, and even (though I don't know about it today), a selection of used video games (from her husband) for sale, where I bought Pikmin and I believe Metroid Prime. I haven't made much progress in either, or you would see it in Carbon-izer GAMES, my "game review" page.

Here are a few other pictures that I took in May 2014 after the restaurant was gutted.

• Gutted PP, May 2014
• Gutted PP, May 2014. This is where the counter and menu were. The kitchen was behind that wall. This configuration was intact for both LTP and PP&R.

UPDATE 01-21-2022: Removed old update that mentioned in 2017 the bakery was renamed as La Gabriella Coffeeshop & Pastries. Also removed the [2010s] entry since the building was not built in the 2010s. Further work on this page will be done eventually.

Handy Burger / The Onion Ring / The Deluxe / Chimy's Cerveceria

Chimy's sign looks kind of cool at night, but no picture of that, sorry (December 2015)

This restaurant, best known to me as the Deluxe Diner, always had a bit of a special place in my heart, even if I never went there. It was the first thing I saw besides the late Dulie Bell Building if we were going down the ramp from Wellborn, plus it was always featured in a little "menu booklet" that the George Bush Library had in their early days. It started as a hamburger restaurant called the Handy Burger (first reference in papers was 1962), which was the first place in town to have a microwave for food use. Around 1979 (give or take a year), this became a restaurant called "The Onion Ring" (which picked up a well-known nickname probably more common than the REAL name of the restaurant).

By 1983 it was "The Deluxe Burger Bar" (renamed The Deluxe Diner sometime later), and at some point to be determined, the restaurant's exterior was remodeled (Handy Burger looked substantially different than what Deluxe looked like).

Deluxe Diner menu from better days (c. 1998), note that this is not the full menu

The shuttered Deluxe Diner, Google Street View (c. 2007)
The Deluxe Diner closed in 2006 (that I know for sure) but by that time was in a state of huge decline (food was terrible, management was even worse). Despite having some period diner pieces inside (though the exterior had been modified since the Handy Burger days), the building started to rot and mold until 2012 when most of the restaurant was demolished save for a few walls and was rebuilt into Chimy's Cerveceria, which opened in January 2013. I've never eaten there, based on reports of overpriced food and what I've seen myself (long, cafeteria-like tables). That was disappointing, as I'd been wanting some decent Tex-Mex in Northgate, not a bar. Rest assured, though, with the opening of Torchy's Tacos when I lived at Eastgate, I no longer thought of Chimy's as a wasted opportunity.

So there you go. The tale of one of College Station's oldest restaurant sites in one post. Sorry for the absence as of late...I'll be wrapping up several more of the posts here with one more for the memories.

UPDATE 12-31-2020: Added Handy Burger's opening date as well as other restuarants.