If there’s a gas station/convenience store in the Northeast that has been photographed more times than the late Roger Roy’s former market in South Merrimack – Roy’s Variety – I’d love to know its name and where it is.

What’s that? You’re a forever Nashuan, and Roy’s Variety doesn’t ring a bell?

OK, I bet this will: “Eat Here and Get Gas.”

Occasionally copied – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not – the famous slogan was south Merrimack’s very own, written in capital letters in an eye-catching sign atop Roger and Theresa Roy’s corner store, where the couple served breakfast and lunch and sold groceries and gasoline 80 hours a week for 13 years.

Now, prodded by my colleague Don Himsel’s nicely done “old photo within a more recent photo” weekly feature that appeared in September, several of the Roys’ grown children are inviting everyone who wants to talk about and learn more about the store and family behind the famous sign to gather Monday evening at Merrimack’s John O’Leary Adult Community Center.

Though it was open from 1963-76, the wide fame that the “Eat Here and Get Gas” sign generated makes it seem like the place was in business for a century. The whimsical slogan that hinted of indigestion was most familiar to locals, and plenty of passers-through, of the Greatest Generation and baby boomer eras.

And after the Roys gave “last call” on June 23, 1976, the icon lived on through photos, history talks and many a trivia contest, in which the question usually was, “What was the actual name of ‘Eat Here and Get Gas’?”

Today, a quick Internet search turns up an “Eat Here and Get Gas” sign on one New Hampshire store –
in West Canaan – and a few others around the country, such as the Marshland Restaurant in Sandwich, Mass., which, according to a travel directory by James Bernard Frost, includes an exclamation point.

There reportedly is another “EHGG” reference in New Hampshire, according to a food-review website, on which a reviewer said the Common Man Express at an Ashland Mobil station sports a sign. And the five famous words are, or were, on a sign for a placed called Sherrill’s in Tipton, Ind.

A variation, “Enjoy Eating Here and Get Gas,” is apparently used as a slogan at Anthony’s Food Shop, a pizza place on Route 1 in York, Maine, although I was up there this summer and don’t remember seeing it.

But no matter how many EHGG’s turn up, I hereby proclaim that ours, or rather the Roy family’s, is the original. It has to be, because the way it came about is such a fun little tale.

It was Theresa Roy who broached the idea of a rooftop sign, according to daughter Denise Roy. Business at the newly opened Roy’s Variety wasn’t exactly brisk, so when a man suggested a big sign might lure more customers, she talked it over with Roger.

He agreed. So they gave the go-ahead to a sign man – who, surely not coincidentally – was the same guy who suggested a sign in the first place.

Legend has it, according to Denise Roy, that her mom came up with “Eat here, get gas,” but had no idea she was channeling the master of malapropisms Yogi Berra himself.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Roy remembers her mom saying, with an emphasis on “that,” in the days after the installation of the sign that dropped the comma and added “and.”

The longest of Nashua and south Merrimack long-timers may recall the first incarnation of the future Roy’s Variety – Theresa Roy’s little vegetable stand that stood, Denise Roy guessed, just about where Georgio’s restaurant is today.

“That’s how everything really started,” Roy said. “She had her little Chevy truck that she drove to Market Square in Boston every day.”

That kind of trip isn’t much today, but it’s safe to say Theresa Roy’s daily round trip ate up a good chunk of the day back 50 and 60 years ago.

Among the really neat visual aides Denise Roy said her family will bring along on Monday is a huge scrapbook of notes, photos and newspaper clippings people sent from all over the country. Many visitors from far away told the Roys they shared their photos of “Eat Here and Get Gas” with their local newspapers and tht many of them printed it.

Another can’t-miss is the nicely done DVD, complete with interviews with Roger and Theresa Roy, their children’s recollections and plenty of whimsical tidbits about the classic slice of Americana called “Eat Here and Get Gas.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6443 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Shalhoup on Twitter (@Telegraph_DeanS).