CLOCK TICKING ON TIMELESS BURGER BAR MUNCHERS FEAR LOSS OF TASTY VALLEY TRADITION.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

The hitching post out back is gone and there are a few more stools in front, but everything else is still the same at The Munch Box.

It's still 1956 - still the same hole-in-the-wall, bright-yellow lunch stand on Devonshire Street in Chatsworth, where the neighborhood gathers for hamburgers, chili fries, root beer floats, some laughs and some griping about how much has changed in town over the years.

Not The Munch Box, though. Not Chatsworth's Rock of Gibraltar - 300 square feet of living, breathing history that has somehow escaped change.

But the future is threatening.

Owners of a Salt Lake City outfit called Extra Space Storage want to demolish The Munch Box and the storage facility now behind it and to develop a 75,000-square-foot self-storage facility, a 13,000-square-foot shopping center and an 800-square-foot office building.

The Munch Box would be flattened to make room for five parking spaces, according to the project's master plan submitted to the city Planning Department.

A 47-year-old landmark destroyed for five parking places.

When word got around that The Munch Box was in danger, owner Buck Barker had more people showing up to help him than Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie had at the Alamo.

The Chatsworth Historical Society threw its weight behind The Munch Box. Councilman Hal Bernson has a motion pending before the Los Angeles City Council to have it declared a historical-cultural monument. More than 700 people from the neighborhood have signed petitions to save the place where they go for chili dogs and root beer floats.

The furor hasn't escaped the attention of Extra Space Storage officials, who met last week with Linda and Andre van der Valk, co-presidents of the Chatsworth Historical Society, and with Barker.

``The agreement we reached is that The Munch Box could stay, but we didn't come to economic terms,'' said Monty Conrad, vice president of real estate for the Salt Lake City company.

``The project, if approved, will take 18 to 24 months, and it's hard to establish new rent numbers two years down the line,'' Conrad said, adding that his company wants to become part of the community.

But the community isn't having any part of the promises. What difference does it make if they take a wrecking ball to The Munch Box or raise the rent so high that Barker will have to turn out the lights himself?

He's already working nights as a truck driver to help make ends meet after his wife became ill.

His kids, Julie and Andrew, are helping their dad run the stand he bought in 1985 from his uncle, John Kent, who opened it in 1956.

All the customers know the story. They know that this man and his tiny lunch stand have become the heart of this community.

Just ask the kids from Lawrence Middle School and Chatsworth High School down the block who don't always have the price of lunch. Buck lets them ride for a few days. A kid can't learn on an empty stomach, he says.

Or ask the people in town who throw the fund-raisers and benefits. One night I watched more than 500 people show up for a fund-raiser at The Munch Box to help the family of a little girl who had been hit by a car.

The food was on him that night, said Buck, putting a few thousand dollars in the family's hands to help pay mounting medical bills.

That's the kind of guy he is, and that's why his loyal customers keep coming back.

``My grandfather brought my father here, and my father brought me here, and now I'm bringing my kids here,'' said Jason Douglass, a third-generation customer of The Munch Box who stopped by Monday to offer Buck his support.

Matt Snyder, 35, was there, too.

``As a kid, I was too short to see over the counter, so I'd pull myself up to watch Buck making my root beer float,'' he said. ``You don't let a place like this go without a fight.''

No, you don't, agreed Jim Black, Don Devine and Dean Gautschy, who have been eating lunch at The Munch Box for more than 40 years.

``It'd be a crime for a big entity to step on a landmark like this,'' Devine said.

As a kid growing up in Chatsworth, Mark Farrington used to tie up his horse to the hitching post out back. Now, as an adult, he's driving a food delivery truck to The Munch Box a couple of times a week.

``I know towns have to revitalize, but a town needs character, too, and The Munch Box is the character of Chatsworth,'' Farrington said.

Buck thanks all his customers for their support. He hopes to be able to tell them that everything will work out and The Munch Box will be here for generations to come.

For grandfathers to bring fathers, and fathers to bring their sons and daughters, because a town isn't anything without some character to pass on to its kids.

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) A chili cheeseburger is one of the 1956-style specialties at The Munch Box, a 47-year-old landmark in Chatsworth.

(3) Jason Douglass gives son Chasen, 2, a taste as older son Cameron, 9, enjoys a root beer float at The Munch Box.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer