A Columbus restaurant that opened during the Vietnam War will close for good on Sunday
By the time the sun sets Sunday, a south Columbus institution will have closed for the last time and the era of drive-in restaurants that once dotted Victory Drive between downtown and Fort Benning will be over.
Gus’s Drive-In, which opened in 1965 as the Vietnam War was gearing up, is closing for good Sunday, owner Anthony Kontaxis said Wednesday afternoon. He just recently told his six employees and word is starting to filter out to customers who have frequented the restaurant for steak sandwiches and country-style cooking.
“Back in the day, Victory Drive was flooded with drive-in restaurants with the carhops on skates,” Kontaxis said. “We are the only original one left on Victory Drive.”
And by the end of this week, Gus’s will be history, just like the old Baker High School across Victory Drive that has been replaced by a Walmart Supercenter.
“It’s definitely the end of an era and has been very hard emotionally,” Kontaxis said.
The decision to close the family business has been excruciating and the root many sleepless nights, he said.
“I am just a nervous wreck about it all,” Kontaxis said. “It’s bittersweet, but it’s just one of those decisions that you just know it’s time.”
This day has been coming for decades.
In an August 1986 Ledger-Enquirer article about her business., Anthony’s mother, Sophia Kontaxis, said this: “Here I am, sitting alone with McDonald’s, Arby’s, Taco Bell, you name it.”
The restaurant survived 32 more years.
Sophia Kontaxis, now 91, retired from daily operation of the restaurant about 15 years ago. Anthony moved back home from Atlanta in 2008 to help take care of his mother and run the restaurant. He never intended to run it for 10 years.
“We never did have a cutoff date on how long I would be down here to help her,” he said. “The cutoff day is Sunday. It’s evolved for 10 years now.”
The restaurant was opened in May 1965 by Gus Vogas, who died about a year after opening it. Vogas was Sophia Kontaxis’ first husband and they had divorced. The business was shut down briefly after Vogas’ death and Kontaxis made the decision to move from Pensacola, Fla., to Columbus with her three children and reopen the restaurant.
Back in the day, she worked long hours, her son said.
“She would get up in the morning, get us to school, open the restaurant at 10 a.m., work all day and my sister and I would come back to the restaurant,” he said. “She would keep it open until 3 a.m., because the bars would close at 1:45 and the cars would be lined up, five or six deep. We didn’t know many people back then, so my sister and I would sleep on the empty bread racks below the counter.”
It was a family business in every way, and has been for more than five decades. Even the customers, soldiers and those who lived and worked on the south side of Columbus became family.
“Everybody called her Mama Gus over the years,” Anthony Kontaxis said of his mother. “Everybody knows Mama Gus. I don’t care how old you are, what color you are, whatever you are, it’s Mama Gus.”
If you want to get a feel for the longevity of the restaurant, look at the walls inside the 10-table dining area on the back side of the building. There is a large picture of Elvis in his pressed Army fatigues playing his guitar. The iconic photo of Marilyn Monroe, her dress being blown up, is there, too.
The restaurant has a 1960s greasy-spoon feel.
“It hasn’t changed a whole heck of a lot,” Anthony Kontaxis said. “We are steadfast about keeping everything the same. I believe that (Christopher) Columbus brought a lot of the equipment I have in the kitchen over on the boat. Everything is pretty much original.”
The core of the business for many years was soldiers.
“We have served thousands of soldiers over the years,” Kontaxis said. “Mom has always been a supporter of Fort Benning and the troops over the years. They have been a staple for us and we have been a staple for them.”
A sign hangs in the dining room that reads: “God Bless America and all who defend it.”
Gus’s is not health food and makes no pretension of being so, even in this health-conscious society.
“Don’t ask for health food here, whatever you do,” Kontaxis said. “We have incorporated salads and there are salads on the menu, but by the time we top them with everything we want them to have, they have lost that health factor.”
And they don’t hide it, either. There is a sign on the wall that says, “Bacon makes everything better.”
Sunday the restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The property, about three-quarters of an acre at the intersection of Benning Road and Victory Drive, is for sale and has been for months, Kontaxis said.
“It has been for sale and there are all kinds of possibilities,” he said. “It’s a great location and one of the best locations, if not the best, on Victory Drive with all the access, ingress and egress.”
Rooted in the south side, Kontaxis said one of the challenges has been to keep the prices as low as possible.
“The prices we charge here on our menus, I would like to say we could almost double them on the north side of town,” he said. “And that has been one thing with Mama Gus over the years. As far as increasing prices, she refused to do it, saying, ‘I can’t do that to my customers.’ We have kept prices to a minimum.”
Gus’s “Famous Steak Sandwich” is $5.25 and you can add a drink and fries for $2.99 more. You can get a foot-long chili dog for $3.99 and a scrambled dog for $5.99.
But the real story is not in the menu, rather on the walls.
A wooden sign hangs that touts old-school values.
“Table Manners,” the sign starts. “Say please and thank you; put your napkin in your lap; don’t talk with your mouth full; sit up straight; don’t start eating until every one else is served; take small bites; don’t play with your food; chew with your mouth closed; keep both feet on the floor; excuse yourself before leaving the table.”
“That’s just a bunch of sayings Mama Gus used over the years,” her son said.
And it’s been a lot of years.
This story was originally published September 27, 2018 at 5:50 PM.