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Item
Title
Oral history interview with Robert Svilar [Sound Recording 01]
Date(s)
- 1980-09-10 (Creation)
Extent
Audiocassette; 00:27:43
Name of creator
Biographical history
Robert Svilar was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1925. He worked in the Traffic Division of the Portland Police Bureau and, beginning in 1956, directed traffic at Yaw's Top Notch drive-in restaurant while off-duty. He was known as Bob the Tootsie Roll Cop for his practice of handing out Tootsie Roll candies to customers at Yaw's. He died in 2007.
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Scope and content
Tape 1, Side 1. This oral history interview with Robert Svilar was conducted by Curtis Johnson from September 10-11, 1980, at Carmen’s Restaurant in Portland, Oregon. The interview was conducted as part of the Drive-in Restaurants of Portland Oral History Project, a series of interviews that Johnson conducted about the history of Portland drive-ins, with a particular emphasis on Tik-Tok and Yaw's Top Notch. The interview was conducted in two sessions. In the first interview session, conducted on September 10, 1980, Svilar briefly discusses his family background and early life in Portland and talks about working for the Portland Police Bureau. He speaks about directing traffic at Yaw’s Top Notch drive-in restaurant while off-duty; speaks about handing out Tootsie Roll candies to restaurant customers; and talks about police-community relations in the Hollywood neighborhood of Portland. He talks about the popularity of drive-in restaurants in the 1950s and 1960s, and how the atmosphere changed in the 1970s.
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Conditions governing access
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
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Languages of the material
- English
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Name access points
- Johnson, Curtis (Contributor)