A love note to Napa County’s last A&W Burger joint
There was always something special about a stop at A&W. Even when I knew I probably shouldn’t enjoy that frothy, nostalgic indulgence, a root beer float was always in the order.
Last week I made my final trip to St. Helena to visit the local A&W, the last in Napa County before it closed on March 31.
My childhood memories are dotted with A&W carhops, food serving trays that were hooked to the driver’s side window, the family of burgers (Papa, Mama and Baby Burgers) and the sensory experience of a signature A&W root beer float—a magical combination of flavors that danced together, a tingly, creamy, refreshing treat that long ago was served only in a thick frosted, glass mug.
At a recent editorial meeting I mentioned that my mother’s Napa neighborhood social group, a Friday night casual meet-up of seniors that has continued weekly following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, had made their way up to St. Helena for a final A&W stop.
In that conversation, I also recalled that there was once an A&W in Napa on Silverado Trail near Third Street (right near the five-way intersection that includes Coombsville Road), as well as an A&W in “south county” as it was then called, an unincorporated region of southern Napa County that is now the city of American Canyon.
No one in the room, even people that have lived in Napa County for more than 25 years, knew of these other A&W restaurants that now exist only in my early memories.
My mother, Elaine Adams, who was born in Napa in 1940, recalls Friday night cruises in Napa from the Wright Spot burger joint on Soscol Avenue to the A&W on Silverado Trail as the path that teens took in the 1950s to socialize. She reports that both restaurants had carhops, and they “dragged” back and forth between the two locations to find out what was going on.
When I was very young, we lived in the Alta Heights neighborhood of Napa. Right up the hill from Napa’s A&W, was Alta Heights Elementary School where I eagerly began kindergarten. A highlight of our childhood back then was the house on Julian Avenue that in lieu of candy, passed out coupons for “Free A&W Root Beer Floats” each Halloween. As children we felt as if we’d won the lottery with that Halloween treat!
Both my mother and grandmother were Napa Valley Unified School District teachers, and in the 1970s both also taught at Napa Junction School. As I child, I was frequently in the south county and vividly remember visits to the A&W on Highway 29 south of Napa Junction, which decades ago really was a junction, as active railroad tracks crossed the highway. Those root beer floats were definitely a reward for assisting my mother with bulletin board and classroom resets on weekends.
Most of my A&W memories, however, were in St. Helena. On the weekends my grandparents would take my little sister and me upvalley from Napa to St. Helena to visit elderly shut-ins who could not get out to attend church. My grandfather, a pastor who ministered to those who sought counseling and communion, made “house calls” and we were always happy to go along for the visits and the ride.
Stops along the way included the Napa Valley Olive Oil Manufacturing Co. on Charter Oak in St. Helena, where we would enjoy tastes of then-exotic imported cheeses cut with a long piece of wire, wrapped in butcher paper and tied with a string. My grandparents would pay for cheese and olive oil with cash that was stuffed into an old rolltop desk in the corner. This local business is still owned by the Particelli family, which acquired it from the original owners in 1960.
The A&W in St. Helena was established in 1966; in 1976 it was purchased by Tom Redmon. His daughter, Lisa Redmon, points out this was the same year as the Judgment of Paris, which forever changed the California wine industry and the trajectory of the Napa Valley. St. Helena was a little farming town back then.
Now a Napa Valley vintner, Lisa Redmon reflected upon her family’s 50-year run at the upper valley’s only drive-through restaurant. The Redmon family owned the property and ran the A&W franchise for 35 years, then leased it to A&W franchisees, Peter and Annette Knight, for the past 15 years.
Lisa Redmon attended St. Helena High School across the street. “I graduated in ‘84 but my dad made a deal with the principal that I could get out of school every day about a half hour early for lunch,” she remembered. Along with her father she would work the lunch hour. “Kids would come over from the high school, and a lot of other people would come in.”
Many of those people were selling real estate. “So my dad did all these handshake deals,” she said, “That’s how he got into real estate,” purchasing from people he knew, using profits from real estate transactions and the A&W. Redmon’s father purchased the vineyard that launched Redmon Wines in foreclosure decades ago.
The family’s latest real estate transaction is the sale of the St. Helena A&W site. The new owners own Azteca Market and Taqueria, a multi-generational Napa Valley business, which is pleasing to Lisa Redmon, who mentioned that we all need normal places to eat, rather than only fancy, high-end restaurants.
“Early on, my brother and I, we would go in with my dad on the summer mornings, and he would put us to work,” Redmon remembers tasks such as filling the coleslaw cups. It was hard work from an early age she said, but “that’s what’s helped me in my business, with my work ethic.”
Later she worked the lunch hours and home football game nights before leaving for college and working in the tech industry for many years.
“For all of those years, it was a real gathering place for young people in particular; there’s not a lot for young people to do in St. Helena,” Redmon added, “We had video games. We had this video game booth at one time, and it was just a place where young people gathered, teenagers and high school students,” as well as college kids from Pacific Union College. “It was just a great gathering place for young people.”
For the Redmon family it was “a bit of the American dream,” she concluded.
I will miss stopping in at the St. Helena A&W, as the grand finale of those weekend upvalley trips with my grandparents was always a stop for a root beer float before heading back home to Napa. The final St. Helena root beer float I enjoyed last week took me way back in time.
