Back to the Big T
- Richard Friend
- Oct 12
- 6 min read
Charlie Nickell Shares Photos and Memories From the Beloved Restaurant That His Family Owned for 32 Years
When the popular Big T closed its doors in February 2007, the Laurel Leader tried to get an interview with owner Charlie Nickell. There’d been no final farewell announcement or big countdown to closing day; the restaurant simply didn’t reopen one morning, and then sat vacant for another two years before being razed in 2009 to make way for the Pollo Campero restaurant that occupies the site today. Charlie was understandably too emotional to talk to the Leader about having to close the business that his family had run for 32 years.
The restaurant may be gone, but it most certainly has never been forgotten—especially by those like me who grew up on its hamburgers, fried chicken, roast beef, and dipped ice cream cones. And so it was a particularly special treat for me when Charlie reached out to The Laurel History Boys and was willing to share his photos and scrap books documenting that wonderful time in our hometown’s history. As thrilled as we are to be able to now host a History Contributors album with over 400 images on our website, we were equally elated to finally connect with Charlie, who shared many stories and anecdotes about the restaurant that still means so much to so many.
For starters, he clarified an important point about the name itself. Was it the Big T? Was it Tastee-Freez? The names were pretty much interchangeable as far as I’d known. “The official name was Big T Family Restaurant featuring Tastee-Freez,” Charlie explains. It had started as just a Tastee-Freez ice cream shop when Mr. and Mrs. James DeLorenzo started it in April 1970. Prior to that, the small building had been Laurel’s very first McDonald’s. With no room for indoor seating, McDonald’s had opened a new, larger location further south on Washington Boulevard in 1969.
Charlie’s father, James Nickell, took over the franchise in November 1974 after the DeLorenzo’s lease expired and expanded it to include the wider menu options that Big T offered. That meant literally expanding the restaurant, as well, to add a seating area and customer restrooms.
Speaking of which, Charlie has a unique story about those restrooms.
In the early years of the business, customers had to walk behind the counter and through the kitchen to access the single restroom that was primarily for employees. On January 18, 1983, James was still chipping excess concrete off the floor tiles of the new men’s room when a customer walked in. Without looking up, James said, “Hey, buddy, we’re still finishing work in here—you can use the women’s room, though.” And as he did just that, John Riggins—the future Hall of Fame running back for the Washington Redskins—became the very first customer to use the brand new women’s restroom at the Big T. Charlie watched as he returned to a pickup truck bearing Kansas license plates while a companion waited at the counter for their ham sandwiches. Charlie’s wife, Lisa, went outside discreetly and got Riggo’s autograph on a receipt check. Four days later, the Redskins defeated the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game en route to their Super Bowl XVII victory over the Dolphins—a game in which Riggins was the MVP.
Charlie spoke at length about the long hours that he and his family put into the business, especially in the early days. He recalled working 12 hours a day for the first three years, with the restaurant typically only drawing about $100 a day. But the customers kept coming, and by the 1980s, Big T was booming.
The idea to host vintage car shows in the ample parking lot behind the restaurant came from two different car clubs, and the shows were always well attended. Big T hosted five or six of the shows each year all the way up to its final summer in 2006. With the parking lot filled, attendees could be seen walking along Marshall Avenue from Fourth Street and beyond.
It was in 1987 that Charlie formed The Whitewalls, a band specializing in 1950s and 60s hits. The car shows at the Big T provided a perfect outdoor venue for their music, and brought countless hungry customers into the restaurant. The events were so popular, in fact, that an ice cream truck would occasionally try to encroach upon the business—at a Tastee-Freez, of all places!
The restaurant would get so busy during the car shows that Charlie would often have to leave the stage to help out in the kitchen.
The Whitewalls didn’t just play at the Big T, though—they were frequently booked at other popular Laurel spots, including the Irish Pizza Pub, Town Tavern, Sam & Elsie’s, El Torito, Sullivan’s, the American Legion, Elks and Moose Lodges, Montpelier Festival, Laurel Fourth of July, and the Main Street Festival. They also traveled for out-of-town gigs, playing at Ocean City and even during a hockey game at the Capital Centre. Their final show was New Year’s Eve 1995 at the American Legion, but many of their videotaped performances can still be enjoyed on Charlie’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@ECNProduction.
The Big T was also known for its sponsorship and participation in Laurel’s softball leagues through the years, and routinely fielded competitive teams. In an era when games were covered by the Laurel Leader and featured a veritable who’s who of local businesses of the 1980s, both the Big T and Tastee-Freez had teams that made it into the Leader’s weekly Top Ten Softball Poll on multiple occasions.
The photo albums and scrap books that Charlie has shared for his History Contributors page at LaurelHistory.com are a time capsule highlighting all three of these pivotal aspects of his life: the Big T restaurant, the Whitewalls band, and the softball games. Viewing the photos, videos, and news clippings will undoubtedly take you back to that special time in Laurel, and you may very well spot some folks you know (or even yourself) in some of them.
For Charlie, time has thankfully healed some of the wounds that came with closing the restaurant in 2007 after nearly 33 years. But as you’d imagine, he still gets a bit emotional when recalling it.
Business hadn’t been what it once was, especially with so many new restaurants beginning to saturate the city in the new millennium. But one new competitor in particular hit the hardest—Popeyes. For some 15 years, the Big T had been the only fried chicken in town. The arrival of Popeyes directly across the street from them proved to be too much.
Charlie, whose father had passed away only a few months earlier, explains that he and Lisa “needed to get out” that February of 2007. With kids in college and the stress of having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, they “just weren’t happy there anymore” and needed a change. So when he locked the doors at 833 Washington Boulevard that final time, Charlie was more than ready to move on.
There are a handful of businesses from Laurel’s past that resonate with us more than others, and the Big T Family Restaurant featuring Tastee-Freez is consistently cited by residents as one of their sentimental favorites. We fondly recall not just the comfort food, but the comfort of family and the times spent in and around that building that was such a big part of Laurel for over three decades. Thank you, Charlie, for sharing it with us—both then and now.
To view the full collection of Big T photos, visit Charlie’s History Contributors page at www.laurelhistory.com/big-t
Richard Friend is a founding member of The Laurel History Boys, and creator of LostLaurel.com.
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