Pat's Drive In — 112th and Canyon Road, Puyallup
You ordered at the window, paid, and went back and sat in your car. When the food was ready, somebody waved at you through the glass.
That is the thing people remember about Pat’s Drive In, and it is exactly the sort of detail that never makes it into any record. Pat’s stood at 112th and Canyon Road in Puyallup. One photograph of it is known to exist — a colour print showing a low building with cream walls and a red-trimmed roofline, cars nosed in on gravel, and a tall pole sign out by the road.
Search for Pat’s Drive In and you will not find this one — nobody ever wrote it down. Ask anybody who grew up here and you get burgers, onion rings and milkshakes.
Tammy Farmer: “Had the best cheeseburgers the best onion rings and oh my gosh very best milkshakes.” Susan Chesley-Balogh: “I loved their burgers and shakes! Nothing like it around here now.” Judy Ross, more briefly: “Great milkshakes!”
Diane Pederson Uhrich worked there in the late 1970s. Tina Christensen’s father — Ken Christensen, class of ’61 — had a favourite milkshake there, which she mentioned while saying how much she misses him.
Two things here appear nowhere else on the internet. Dewayne Iverson says that before it was Pat’s, it was Walt’s. And Don Bagley points out that the Brown Cow was across the street — which means that corner had two drive-ins facing each other.
Pat’s was also where you ate before the film. The 112th Street Drive-In Theater opened on 2 August 1968 a short way along the same road, and Ken Ruether remembers Pat’s as the stop on the way. “Very sad to see it go away,” he added.
What we do not know
We cannot tell you what years Pat’s operated. Nobody has given a date and we are not going to invent one. Diane worked there in the late seventies, so it was certainly trading then. We do not know when it stopped being Walt’s, or who Walt was.
If you know — or if you have a photograph, particularly of the sign lit at night — please tell us. We will add it to this page and credit you.
We print South Sound designs a few miles from that corner, in Milton. You can see what we have so far in the Puyallup collection.
Most of what is above comes from a photograph posted by Lori Haun to the Puyallup Valley History Group, and the sixty-seven comments underneath it. The photograph is hers, and it is here with her blessing. The memories belong to the people who left them — Diane, Ken, Dewayne, Tammy, Susan, Judy, Tina and Don, who between them remember more about this corner than any archive does. Our thanks to Lori and to the group.