My grandfather once, for a very short time, ran a drive-in restaurant on Aqueduct Road outside of Schenectady. it was right about where the bike path crosses Aqueduct Road, where there is now an auto parts business. His landlord (Ken Williams?) didn’t know how to spell my grandfather’s last name (he wasn’t the only one, though the spelling hints that perhaps he couldn’t pronounce it, either), but maybe it was okay because $65 a month, even in 1957, doesn’t seem like a lot of rent for a commercial property. On the other hand, Aqueduct Road was hardly a highway at the time, and even today doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you would plop down a drive-in restaurant and expect it to do any kind of trade. It didn’t.
If you don’t know, Aqueduct was named Aqueduct because it was once home to, what else, the Rexford Aqueduct. The Aqueduct carried the Erie Canal across the Mohawk River, from Rexford on the Saratoga County side. Remnants of the old structure still remain alongside the current Route 146 bridge.
Ken Williams runs Williams Auto (junk yard) near the very spot you speak of. I am assuming it would be the son/grandson of the man that signed that receipt.
You know, an intelligent person would have made that connection before putting up the post . . . I even noticed it was Williams Auto. Yes, i’d guess the property stayed in the family then. Looking at the buildings I wouldn’t guess that one of them was once a restaurant of any sort, but one never knows. . . .