ANDERSON, S.C.

Sandra Bagwell sits at a table in the back of the dining room at Besto for a few minutes to talk about her early days at this Anderson eatery. But as the lunch hour approaches, she starts to fidget.

Soon she moved to the kitchen, and eventually to the register.

Bagwell can’t sit still very long while she is here.

“They call me the Tasmanian devil,” Bagwell said, laughing. “I can’t sit still for very long. And when all the family was here, it was a superstorm.”

This job was not something that Bagwell, or her sister, Sharon Christmas, planned on.

For Sandra, working at Besto started when she was in high school. It was the summer of her senior year.

“I started out with a three- or four-year plan,” Bagwell said.

Now, 35 years later, what started out as a summer job has turned into a career of maintaining a tradition.

Usually, familiar faces wander through the doors of this restaurant.

Like the regular customers and the longtime employees. Or even the people who make up the daily, morning Bible study group, called the Besto Bible Study, who meet here.

Every day, at least one of these sisters is here. Some days they are both here. And on some occasions, the “superstorm” — the two sisters, their mother and father — are here. Their mother, Betty Smith, still works at the register.

Their father, Roy, who used to work here fulltime, is now the person with the primary ice cream-making duties. He also still cooks their Brunswick stew.

It was not a community started by the Smith family. They will tell you that.

The man who started Besto was Charlie Parker.

He had served in World War II, where he had practice cooking, the sisters said. In 1950, he opened the small restaurant on North Main Street. He offered hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dinners and fresh, homemade ice cream.

And in the early days, for about the first year, it was not called Besto, but Zesto. It was a franchise that was part of a chain.

The “Z” was changed to a “B” when Parker grew tired of paying the franchise fees.

Some things have changed since then, but some things are still the same. First, the restaurant is in the same location where it opened originally.

“Someone offered Charlie $10,000 to put it where Applebee’s Restaurant is now,” Christmas said. “But he said nothing would ever make it that far out. The mall wasn’t even built there yet.”

The machine used to mix ice cream is the one Parker used when he owned the place.

And much of the menu is the same. As are some of the recipes.

So are the wires where the cashier places the order and sends it down the line with a clothespin attached. One wire stretches around to the ice cream area, and the other allows orders to be sent to the cook working at the grill.

There are no televisions updating customers on the news, and no wireless Internet connections. And the bright yellow booths that are in the dining room also date back to another era.

Employees still are trained the same way Bagwell was trained.

“You started out working with the ice cream,” she said. “Then you moved to the grill; and when it was seen you were trustworthy, you could move to the register.”

In some cases, the customers are in their second or third generation, starting with Sharon and Sandra. They started coming to Besto with their Grandma Smith. It was their regular Friday night stop.

They would always order a cheeseburger and chocolate shake.

Or take Robert “Bob” Hall. He has been coming here for 20 years. As soon as his car pulls into the restaurant’s parking lot, Bagwell and Christmas know he has arrived.

His parents came here. Now, he is usually here about two or three times a week.

“Here, they call their customers by their first name,” Hall said.

The employees also ask about doctor visits, and they have been to weddings and funerals for customers and employees.

All of that is why, what started as a three- to four-year plan for Sandra, when she looked for work after college, became a family business.

They may not have started the community here, but it is why these sisters stay.

When Parker retired in 1985, the Smith family began leasing the business. In 2003, a couple of years after Parker died, they bought the restaurant from Parker’s widow, Doris.

This place, as it turns out, is the extended family to these sisters.

“It’s hard to leave family,” Christmas said. “Community means a lot to us. We love it here.”