The Chain Behind A Famous John Mellencamp Lyric Is Down To One Location

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John Mellencamp's 1982 hit song "Jack & Diane" paints a picture of small-town life: teenage romance, work, and local haunts. In essence, the song remains relatable decades after its release. With an easy to follow beat and memorable lyrics, you can bet when the song is played in public, folks will be singing along or at least tapping their feet. In the "little ditty," Mellencamp sings about the titular couple "suckin' on chili dogs outside the Tastee-Freez," which was an actual chain of casual, quick food restaurants founded in 1950. The carhop-style eateries immortalized by Mellencamp once peppered the nation with nearly 2,000 locations, but as of this writing, there is only one standalone Tastee Freez in Anchorage, Alaska.

However, the brand is more widespread than it seems. Despite being one of many fast food chains that has filed for bankruptcy, Tastee Freez was purchased by the Galardi Group in the early 2000s. This group also owns Wienerschnitzel and Hamburger Stand and ultimately combined Tastee-Freez with those restaurants. Today, you'll find a limited number of Tastee-Freez frozen treats inside both Wienerschnitzel and Hamburger Stand locations. While there may be a sole brick and mortar Tastee-Freeze in The Last Frontier, you can still find its shakes, floats, cones, and sundaes everywhere the aforementioned restaurants are located, which, incidentally, is only California, Arizona, and Illinois. After over 75 years, Tastee-Freez's soft serve cones are still pretty decent. We ranked them right in the middle of our ranking of fast food ice cream.

John Mellencamp's reference to Tastee-Freez may be the chain's most famous name drop, but the ice-cream-slinging eatery has also cemented its place in pop-cultures history, thanks to many musicians and writers. In S.E. Hinton's 1967 novel, "The Outsiders," characters Ponyboy Curtis and Two-Bit Mathews stop at a Tastee-Freez for Cokes. The scene is similarly depicted in the 1983 film version in which the characters (played by C. Thomas Howell and Emilio Estevez) go to an actual location in Owasso, Oklahoma.

In 1991, country music star Trisha Yearwood sang about the chain in her song "She's In Love With the Boy." In fact, it's where her lyrical character Tommy gives Katie a promise ring (which sort of gives us "Jack & Diane" vibes). Fellow country crooners Brooks & Dunn sang about "cruisin' back and forth to the Tastee-Freez" in "Hillbilly Deluxe," and the band Chicago gives a shoutout in their 1978 single "Take Me Back to Chicago." Folk rock band The Curry's makes no secret about honoring the iconic ice cream shop either, titling one of their songs "Tastee-Freez."