By Jane Feehan
One story, a true one about early Fort Lauderdale, often crosses my mind as a terrific opening scene of a movie. A dog walks into a lunch stand. With an air of purpose, he trots behind seated customers who appear amused but not surprised to see this frequent visitor. Duke the dog finds a vacant spot at the counter where he drops a nickel from his mouth. The owner of the town’s first restaurant takes the nickel as payment for two hamburgers. He wraps the food in paper; Duke gently picks up the order to deliver to his master, baseball player and animal trainer, Joe Atchinson.*
The story is as colorful as that of the restaurant’s owner Ed Caruth, by then a fixture at the city’s Tarpon baseball games where he sold soda and hot dogs. Kids knew him as “Uncle Ed.”
No one knows when he first came to town, but Caruth was here, according to late historian Philip Weidling, when the notorious Ashley Gang was still robbing banks in South Florida (1915-1924). He opened the first restaurant (there was one other, a diner, but open only in winter). Caruth opened on Brickell Avenue and named it the Hungry Man’s Friend.
(Years later this address transitioned to the site of the famed political hub, Brown’s Restaurant).
Caruth, known for his long black mustache and for using a large multi-purpose knife to flip burgers (new to the American palate then), slice buns, swat roaches and trim his ‘stache, was well-liked by all but seemingly restless. Sometime in 1918 or the year before, he ventured to Pascagoula, MS where he cooked at a hotel restaurant near a large shipyard. By October 1918, he returned to Florida because, as he told a Miami newspaper, “influenza was everywhere.”
Caruth also looked into prospects at Lake Worth where it was booming. But he reappeared in Fort Lauderdale afterward where he opened Ed’s Lunch Stand (or Ed's Place) on Wall Street. Newspaper accounts indicate he was busy at the stand in 1930. By that time everyone in town knew Ed and he knew all. Many delighted in telling stories about the popular eatery, including the time someone asked for half a scrambled egg and he cooked up a half dozen. Business was brisk and everyone expected him to continue to do well. He did, until the Great Depression, when he was forced to close the restaurant.
Ever enterprising, Caruth converted a baby buggy into a cart he painted red and included a sign, “Hot Tamales.” Those were probably the city's first. Refusing tips, he made and sold tamales along the New River waterfront until rationing policies of World War II made meat a scarcity. By then, he could barely walk. It was reported in 1946 that he had moved to Miami to live with relatives; that move could have been well before that. The trail and the timeline, always sketchy, ends there but not before the Caruth name and character was known throughout the city.
In 1959, a story in the Fort Lauderdale News suggested the city’s history included five top characters:
1. Charlie Swaggerty
2. Larry Crabtree
3. Ed Caruth
4. Commodore Brook
5. Sam Drake
Who would be Fort Lauderdale’s top five characters today?
*Atchinson, a catcher, also a successful animal trainer, wound up in the movie biz in Hollywood, CA. More on him in another story …
Sources:
Burghard, A. and Weidling, P. Checkered Sunshine.University of Florida Press, Gainesville: 1966
Miami Metropolis, Oct. 23, 1918
Fort Lauderdale News, July 14, 1930
Fort Lauderdale News Sept. 20, 1932
Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 20, 1938
Fort Lauderdale News, Aug 14, 1946
Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 7, 1946
Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 22, 1955
Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 28, 1959
Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale characters, Fort Lauderdale restaurants, influenza
