I happily remember Ayn Rand giving a patriotic address at Ford Hall Forum where she (an atheist, of course) proclaimed God Bless America, to loud cheering. If I remember correctly she explained that it was a patriotic expression of her love for her chosen country, and thus not strictly religious.

Similarly, she had no objection to Christmas. That holiday tells us to rejoice and be merry, not to weep and repent.

It's about time a business owner laid it on the line. Talk about disclaimers...!

Mad made a left turn? That's sad.

So true , if you are offended by a Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah or Happy Easter or a God bless America you are a boil on the ass of society, if you don't like it too bad , go somewhere else.

More sensible times were when having to even think about putting such a sign in a business window didn't exist. Those were times when the dark cloud of the perpetually offended hadn't yet permeated the landscape. Now there's power to had and money to made in slapping around any fellow citizen for any idiotic "offense". These are NOT sensible times!

LOL, yes, many fond memories of Mad spoofing movies and TV shows and making fun of Hollywood. I even remember a sports spoof called "43 Man Squamish" played with 42 players and a dummy. The ball was called a putz and was made with ibex hide stuffed with blue jay feathers (why on earth would I remember something so idiotic!?). Everything was wide open for Mad's hilarious poke in the eye... then the magazine made a left turn. I stopped buying it.

You must be younger than I. I grew up in sensible times...then the communistic hippies ruined it all...although...free love was GREAT! (for a horny teenager).

When were the sensible times? I think times are better than ever and the sign is crap, but I do like the warning. Taco Bell serves crappy food, which I occasionally eat, and you get no warning.

I enjoy a taco from time to time but I have developed a taste for more authentic venues...we have one in Westbrook where I live and it's great!

The sign, of course, is just a sign of the times. Speaking to one's principles is important and just might go a long way to finding our way back to more sensible times the Free Market Way instead of force from a mob with a minority view on things.

I prefer my crap in a burrito at Taco Bell to on a sign at DQ.

Back in those days I was buying Mad Magazine almost every month.
In one of the last ones I bought in the late 60s, Mad was making fun of radical left college students.
Still etched in my memory is the drawing of an angry-faced pretty young lady pounding away on the typewriter of a student newspaper..

I would have no problem with DQ...except I don't like Ice Cream and have better places to go to get a good healthy Burger.

My Dad would often talk about HJ. He was born in Boston and actually met the Man.

Mad visits a typical Johnson Howard restaurant.
The lampooning from mad during those days was
Nothing was off limits and no political agenda that I recall.

When I was a kid with four brothers, every summer we'd be car trip taken from Alabama to visit relatives in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. A couple of times we instead went to Ohio where my dad's only sibling, a sister, lived.
During these visits we'd take in extra sights like a world's fair in New York, the Statue of Liberty, museums, Cape Cod.
Sometimes we'd only go to places like Washington DC, Miami and in one trip toured Silver Springs, St. Augustine and an alligator farm in north Florida.
Now that I've beaten around the bush, there was one thing constant, Dad always wanted to go to a Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge, which of course included a Howard Johnson's Restaurant.
After about five years of this, Mom got tired of always going to Howard Johnson's and started to complain about it. So Dad was gradually being weened off the Howard Johnson's mystique.
About this time I bought a Mad Magazine. In it there was a two-page comic about a car traveling family with a father, who with hypnotized looking eyes kept repeating "Howard Johnson's, Howard Johnson's, Howard Johnson's~"
Don't recall anything else about that cartoon. I handed it to my Dad while he was reading the newspaper and walked off. I retrieved the magazine later from the lamp table beside Dad's favorite chair.
We never went to another Howard Johnson's.

Howard Johnson was born in Boston, Massachusetts and only finished elementary school because he began to work in his father's cigar business. He served during World War I in the American Expeditionary Force in France. His father died and left him a business that was in debt. He ran the cigar store until 1924 when he liquidated it, but he could not erase the US$10,000 debt. He entered the restaurant industry in order to pay off what remained after he sold the cigar venture.[1]

In 1925, he bought a small soda shop in the Wollaston neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts. He enhanced the quality of the ice cream by buying a recipe from a pushcart vendor for $300. It doubled the butterfat of the product and used only natural flavorings. He used hand-cranked makers in his basement and by 1928 was grossing about $240,000 from ice cream sold in the store and nearby beaches.[2]

Johnson expanded operations by opening more stores and started selling food items such as hamburgers and frankfurters at his original store. In 1929, he opened a second restaurant in Quincy. This sit-down outlet had a broader menu and laid the groundwork for future expansion.

In 1935, Howard Johnson teamed up with a local businessman, Reginald Sprague, and created the first modern restaurant franchise. The idea was new in that day: let an operator use the name, food, supplies, and logo, in exchange for a fee. The business of "HoJo" chain restaurants rapidly expanded and he also entered the lodging industry.

Howard Johnson had his two children also begin working in the business. His son Howard Brennan Johnson and daughter Dorothy Johnson beamed down together from highway billboards proclaiming that "We love our daddy's ice cream" at the time when they were six and eight years old respectively.[3]

Later life Edit

Johnson was married four times, siring at least two children. He had a 60-foot (18 m) yacht and collected paintings. His hobby was "to talk and eat food." His favorite food was ice cream, which he stoutly — he was 205 pounds (93 kg) — maintained was "not fattening." He ate at least a cone a day, and he kept 10 distinct flavors in the freezers of his seven-room Manhattan penthouse and at his home in Milton, Massachusetts.[4]
Johnson retired in 1959, leaving the company to his son, Howard Brennan ("Bud") Johnson. The older Johnson continued to monitor his restaurants for cleanliness and proper food preparation. He would be chauffeured in a black Cadillac bearing the license plate HJ-28 (his initials and 28 ice cream flavors) while performing unannounced inspections of the restaurants.[4]

Me dino agrees with all the stuff on that sign.
If a snowflake saw it, he'd probably weep while running off to a safe zone to meditate with his coloring books.
Now there were signs that wound up offending me when I walked off a hot summer street in St. Petersburg, FL,into a Howard Johnson's Restaurant way back during the mid-60s.
The signs photogenically advertised a menu of about 20 maybe more different wonderful looking ice cream flavors that made me drool.
Me dino asked for about the most exotically tasty one on the wall, whatever that was.
A slightly younger than me kid behind the counter with a bored blank face advised that they only served vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.
I repeated what the kid said with shocked dismay.
The kid only stared back with a bleak uncaring expression.
I remember choosing strawberry because 1. I really wanted something cold and wet in my mouth and 2. strawberry was as exotic as Howard Johnson's could get while dying out as a chain.

AWESOME!!! although it's a shame we must remind some of the American Ideals, Free speech included...
I am not a starbucks fan...can't stand the coffee but I would appreciate a warning sign about their chosen anticultural view...I would be happy to go across the street to DD's.

I don't get the controversy. It nice they warn you about the non-sense before you get in and you can just go to Culver's.