The sandwich menu included the “American cheese,” the “bacon and peanut butter,” the “chopped green olive nut,” the “cucumber and tomato,” and the “head lettuce” sandwich. Candy went out the door in bags adorned in red and white stripes, like the awning outside.ĭepression-era green was the enduring color scheme. Shelves held scores of glass jars filled with tea (Alfalfa Mint, Travencore, and Constant Comment among them) and even more of candy-jelly beans, candy corn, rum raisins, malted milk balls, cherry cordials, strawberry cordials, raspberry cordials, shelf above shelf.
The walls were a milky, Depression-era green, like faded linoleum. Through the Great Depression, World War II, the Baby Boom, the Beatles, Vietnam, Watergate, disco, and Reagan, Drake’s sold chocolate cordials, orange marmalade sandwiches, pecan rolls, and limeade (fresh-squeezed, with the rind in the glass) to three generations of University of Michigan students. From that day until he sold the shop when Bill Clinton was president, Truman Tibbals left everything else pretty much the same, including the name over the candy-stripe awning in front.
He took out the tables and installed high-walled booths. He worked his way up to waiting tables, and after a while he bought the place from old Mr. When Herbert Hoover was president of the United States, a young fellow named Truman Tibbals took a job washing dishes for 35 cents an hour at Drake’s Sandwich Shop, 709 N.