If you want to know where kids were hanging out at any point in history, look at their high school yearbooks. Specifically, turn to the ads. Handmade, hyperlocal and gloriously free of proofreading, they are a portal to a particular place and time.
If the place is Bainbridge Island and the time is the 1970s and ‘80s, the answer is the Kel-Lin Drive In (or possibly Inn, depending on which spelling you stumble across).
Conveniently located within a short walk of BHS, the Kel-Lin fed a generation of hungry youth in the years before McDonald’s, Subway, Starbucks—or any other franchises—came to the island. Owner Gordon Prentice, who also coached the high school football and baseball teams, named the restaurant after daughters Kelly and Lindsey and served up a teen-friendly menu of pizza, sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, ice cream and shakes.
The Kel-Lin was ultimately demolished to make way for Safeway and the Island Village complex. A mention of its name to someone of just the right age is likely to stir up memories of fruit punch, red vinyl booths, special sauce, half-and-half soft serve, fried mushrooms and a legendary Ms. Pac-Man console.
In the words of islander Robbie David, “I’d literally build a time machine for one of those butterscotch shakes.”
