Roy Rogers

The Roy Rogers restaurant in Cranberry Mall has closed for good after an arson fire in a restroom on Friday.Paper had been ignited in the men's restroom, according to Deputy State Fire Marshal W. Faron Taylor. About 35 patrons were evacuated from the restaurant after the fire was discovered shortly before 6 p.m., but the blaze was extinguished in about five minutes without injuries.There was about $2,050 damage to the restaurant, owned by Masci Restaurants Inc. of Gaithersburg, Taylor said.

Gas crisis or no, millions of Americans are hitting the road this summer, and many will travel that magical stretch of road known as the New Jersey Turnpike, where they'll stop at its various service areas which are, well, not so magical. These are named after great Americans, for some reason, and include the Vince Lombardi Service Area, the Thomas Edison Service Area, the Grover Cleveland Service Area, the Molly Pitcher Service Area and so on. You wonder what someone like Thomas Edison would think about having a rest stop named after him. This was maybe the greatest inventor in history, the man who gave us the electric lightbulb, the phonograph and 1,000 other inventions.

Hardee's Food Systems Inc. said yesterday that it is selling all 184 Roy Rogers restaurants it owns in the Baltimore-Washington area to McDonald's Corp. for $74 million.The 184 restaurants are the last remaining in Hardee's Roy Rogers chain, although 49 area Roy Rogers outlets are owned by independent operators."That's it for Roy's," said Jack Russo, an analyst at A. G. Edwards.Russo and other analysts said that without the support of a chain, most of the independents will be forced to close or affiliate with a different restaurant.

What can Michael Khudak possibly say about the Burger King Whopper? A Whopper is a Whopper --not necessarily what Khudak had in mind for lunch this Tuesday afternoon, but it's a distance yet to Newport News, Va., and Interstate 95 is Interstate 95. "It's the first time I've had a Whopper in 10 years," says Khudak, who stopped en route from New Jersey at the Chesapeake House in Cecil County. He'd rather have a turkey sandwich, "but there's no choice." Well, maybe. As an alternative to going to Burger King, the interstate traveler bound on an East Coast summer road trip may also choose, say, McDonald's.

In a setback for the struggling center in Columbia's Wilde Lake village, the Roy Rogers fast-food restaurant there -- which closed last month -- soon will be put up for sale, the owner says.After McDonald's Corp. bought the restaurant last fall, a company official said it would be converted into a McDonald's. But those plans have changed, Karen Witbeck of McDonald's said yesterday."The store just wasn't profitable," she said. "We looked at the monthly receipts and the projections and it was not going to work."

A gun-toting man wearing a nylon mask over his head robbed two employees of a Roy Rogers restaurant in Westminster as they were opening for business early yesterday, state police reported.The employees of the restaurant, at Route 140 and Sullivan Road, were entering the store through the side entrance near the drive-through shortly before 5 a.m. when the robber pointed a dark-colored pistol at them and ordered them inside, police said.The man forced the employees at gunpoint to open the restaurant safe, and he took an undisclosed amount of cash, said Tfc. Michael Cain, who is investigating the incident.

Roy Rogers has a place of honor in Lynda Gomeringer's Harewood Park dream house -- and we're not talking fast food.The 1940s and 1950s movie and television star is an integral part of her bedroom's Western decor.Gomeringer said that as a child, she wanted a bedroom like that of an uncle only 3 1/2 years older -- a bedroom with cowboy decorations, and a wagon with a light in it.But she never told that to her mother, who she thought would not understand."I had a lovely bedroom, but it was very much a girl's," she said.

A Pasadena couple is seeking $6 million in damages after employees at a Pasadena Roy Rogers Restaurant left spit or some other fluid on their cheeseburgers nearly a year ago, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in Anne Arundel Circuit Court.Carl E. and Darlene M. Coffey say that "large amounts of mucous-like fluid" slid off their cheeseburgers when Carl Coffey lifted the buns to inspect the sandwiches they had bought in the restaurant's drive-through lane, according to the suit.The couple is suing McDonald's Corp.

He had a much longer and far more successful career in feature films, but it is through television that most of us came to know Roy Rogers, who died yesterday at 86.From 1951 to '57, he and his wife, Dale Evans, starred in "The Roy Rogers Show" Sunday nights at 6: 30 on NBC. And, if you were of the baby boom generation, you could hardly turn on a television set Saturday mornings or after school in the 1950s and early '60s without seeing one of the scores...

The Roy Rogers fast food chain, a Linthicum-based division of Hardee's Food Systems Inc., is for sale, officials announced yesterday, including 178 restaurants with more than 7,000 employees in the Baltimore-Washington region.North Carolina-based Hardee's, a subsidiary of Imasco Ltd., a consumer products and services company in Montreal, cited the need to cut its losses and focus on its struggling core business -- Hardee's, the nation's fourth largest hamburger chain."Really what we've got is a restaurant system that's not doing well and new management that wants to turn that around," said Peter McBride, Imasco vice president of communications and investor relations.

A man robbed a fast-food restaurant in Eldersburg late Tuesday. The man ordered the manager to open the business' safe, forced him into a walk-in freezer and then fled with an undisclosed amount of money, authorities said. State troopers from the Westminster barracks said the man, who was described as in his 20s, had a dark-colored pistol when he accosted the manager of Roy Rogers outside the business in the 1400 block of Liberty Road about 10:45 p.m. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call state police at 410-386-3000.

"Hillbilly Hollywood: The Origins of Country and Western Stye," by Debby Bull (Rizzoli, 128 pages, $39.95), illustrated If you detest everything conjured up by the term "country and western" you will adore this devastatingly visual send-up. But make no mistake: It's almost spiritually respectful of the excesses and outrages of the singers and other performers who were drawn by the hope of glory and riches from Depression era rural outposts to Los Angeles. Some of the characters -- Gene Autry, Roy Rogers -- are known well even today.

Baseball Giants: Signed P John Johnstone to two-year, $3.35 million contract. Indians: Agreed to terms with former Orioles C Matt Nokes on minor-league contract. Invited P Tim Drew, P Paul Rigdon, P C. C. Sabathia and P Mark Watson to spring training. Rangers: Agreed to terms with OF Jason McDonald and IF Luis Ortiz on minor-league contracts. Tigers: Signed OF Billy McMillon to minor-league contract and invited him to spring training. Yankees: Named Lee Mazzilli first base coach and Bob Didier major-league catching instructor.

"My Last Days as Roy Rogers," by Pat Cunningham Devoto. Warner. 368 pages. $20.Tab Rutland is a feisty little girl growing up in Bainbridge, Ala., where the Ladies Help League is the pinnacle of social acceptance, where the threat of polio lurks in every twilight, and where Gene Autry and Roy Rogers ride the plains at the local theater.The celluloid cowboys will keep riding, as long as the town doesn't close every last public place. In this particular, mid-1950s summer, polio makes the residents of Bainbridge hide in their homes to avoid the disease.

The rich are moving back into Baltimore City. The poor are still getting out.Congress has abolished the Internal Revenue Service and will replace it with an agency having identical functions bearing the same name.The Northern Irish are mired in the 17th century, which looks ridiculous to us, who are well into the 19th.Roy Rogers is finally Home on the Range.Pub Date: 7/13/98

He had a much longer and far more successful career in feature films, but it is through television that most of us came to know Roy Rogers, who died yesterday at 86.From 1951 to '57, he and his wife, Dale Evans, starred in "The Roy Rogers Show" Sunday nights at 6: 30 on NBC. And, if you were of the baby boom generation, you could hardly turn on a television set Saturday mornings or after school in the 1950s and early '60s without seeing one of the scores...

A bright star from Hollywood's simpler years has fallen - a star from the days of the cinematic Old West where blood never flowed, despite a proliferation of flesh wounds, where the good guys always beat the bad guys, and where there was never any problem telling which was which.Roy Rogers died of congestive heart failure in his sleep yesterday in Apple Valley, near Los Angeles. He was 86.Rogers was in more than a hundred movies through his long career, and for nearly a dozen years - 1943 to 1954 - was the biggest cowboy movie star on the back lot, famous on nearly every continent.

Earle Palmer Brown is back in the saddle again with the Roy Rogers restaurant advertising account.The restaurant chain said yesterday that it had selected the Bethesda-based advertising agency to oversee the $20 million account. The agency had the account from 1986 until 1990, when Hardee's Food Systems Inc. acquired the chain and moved the account to Ogilvy & Mather in New York.Hardee's began converting many of the Roy Rogers restaurants to Hardee's, but consumers rebelled. In March, Hardee's began turning those restaurants back into Roy Rogers outlets.

Only a gameBRAZIL shuts down its stock exchange when the national team plays in soccer's World Cup.English fans took on the police of France as well as the fans of Tunisia during World Cup games in recent weeks.Iran acted as though it had won World War III when its team defeated the United States.The worst was when Argentina defeated England on a penalty kick shootout after a scoreless overtime in a 2-2 tie.The Argentines went crazy at home. They thought they had gained vengeance for the Falkland Islands war of 1982.

A bright star from Hollywood's simpler years has fallen - a star from the days of the cinematic Old West where blood never flowed, despite a proliferation of flesh wounds, where the good guys always beat the bad guys, and where there was never any problem telling which was which.Roy Rogers died of congestive heart failure in his sleep yesterday in Apple Valley, near Los Angeles. He was 86.Rogers was in more than a hundred movies through his long career, and for nearly a dozen years - 1943 to 1954 - was the biggest cowboy movie star on the back lot, famous on nearly every continent.