There once was a hit man named Artie, who specialized in strangling his victims. One day he performed a hit on a friend's ex-wife as a favor, but being a professional, he said he had to charge, but only asked for one dollar, to protect his image. The hit was to take place in the parking lot of the local Shop 'n Save. As the woman drove into the parking lot, Artie noticed that she had a boyfriend with her, which meant he had to be dealt with. Artie jumped him first, strangled him and then turned on the ex wife, strangling her. The manager of the store, alerted to the scuffle going on outside, ran to the scene and was strangled himself before the police arrived and secured Artie.
The headline in the paper the next day read, "Artie Chokes Three For A Dollar At Shop 'n Save."
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
The School Hot Lunch Program
Once I became a first grader, one of the big kids, who had to be at school during the morning and the afternoon, I became aware of the hot lunch program at school. Many of us lived within walking distance of the school and were excused at noon to walk home to a bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup or a peanut butter sandwich. That’s right, I did not say peanut butter and jelly as my mother had not mastered that concept yet, and I was forced to choke down, on sandwich day, two slices of Holsum bread with an arid layer of Peter Pan peanut butter between them.
The bus kids, and those whose mothers worked during the day marched down to the room which, at Longfellow School, served as the gymnasium, assembly room and cafeteria. At one end was the stage for presentations and plays, the other end held the kitchen, serving window and highly varnished picnic tables. For $.25 a kid could buy a ticket for a hot meal and a ½ pint bottle of milk or for $.03, a ticket which scored him just a milk, if mom sent him to school with his Roy Rogers lunch box with a sandwich. My Hopalong Cassidy lunch box, contained a thermos bottle, and so I would be relieved of the necessity of even that expense.
The hot lunch program was funded, not by the Department of Education, as one might think, but by the Department of Defense. Its purpose was not to keep us healthy learners as the concept of “a hungry child can’t learn,” wasn’t in vogue. It was borne out of the need to insure that our generation could provide enough healthy cannon fodder when the time came, and that the girls would become brood stock for another generation of soldiers. The Great Depression had created so many malnourished youngsters, you see, that the government was alarmed at the number of young men rejected medically for military service during World War II.
Lunches at home were pretty mundane. In addition to what I’ve described above, there was Franco American spaghetti, a plate of elbow macaroni with orange shake cheese or good old, healthy baloney. We didn’t expect any more than that, and we knew what it was, even though no one had ever seen a healthy balone, from which the baloney came, grazing in a pasture.
One nearly forgotten rainy day in the first grade, I did not want to walk home in my heavy, oil skin raincoat with hat that didn’t turn when my head did, giving me a limited field of vision, so I conned a quarter out of my mother to eat a hot lunch. At noon, I watched the walkers leave, lined up and filed to the cafeteria with those, who were already veterans of the lunch room. As we neared the first floor, my nose was assaulted by a warm, damp smell. I stood in line, received from one of the hair-netted lunch ladies a thick, white plate with a green band, which I could barely hold, and shuffled down the line as the food was ladled onto the plate. At the end of the line I was given a ½ pint glass bottle of milk. I found a seat with some of my friends, some of whom started to eat, and looked at the plate. There was a distinguishable glop of what looked like mashed potatoes, unlumpy like my mothers. Over this was spread a mass of brown. Yup, brown it was. I suppose it was meat and gravy, but to a finicky first grader, any thing unrecognizable was nauseating. I picked at it, drank the milk, developed a roaring headache and was scolded by some female authority figure as I emptied an almost full plate into the trash when the bell rang.
At home that night, I still felt sick, and my father, like most of his generation to whom the three squares a day of army food were a welcome relief from the poverty of their childhoods, was not sympathetic. “When you get into the army,” he warned, “You’ll eat it or starve.” I heaved at that.
From then on, I avoided staying in for lunch until junior high, when a 20 minute lunch period and a two mile round trip walk forced me to bring a lunch and watch others try to put the meals down. We were now eating out of bilious green sectional trays and the milk bottles had become cartons. The meal I remember the most, not only because of its frequency, but because to this day I’ve never seen anything as revolting served to free citizens. It was called, “Canadian bacon.” It was, in reality, fried baloney, and so help me the edges of it were gray-green.
The food in the Army, by the way, with the exception of the C-ration of ham and lima beans, was pretty good. One of my first extra duties as a lieutenant was mess officer, and later in the reserves, I served as director of instruction at the Army’s food service school at Ft. Lee, VA. But… Anything after those school hot lunches would have been good.
The bus kids, and those whose mothers worked during the day marched down to the room which, at Longfellow School, served as the gymnasium, assembly room and cafeteria. At one end was the stage for presentations and plays, the other end held the kitchen, serving window and highly varnished picnic tables. For $.25 a kid could buy a ticket for a hot meal and a ½ pint bottle of milk or for $.03, a ticket which scored him just a milk, if mom sent him to school with his Roy Rogers lunch box with a sandwich. My Hopalong Cassidy lunch box, contained a thermos bottle, and so I would be relieved of the necessity of even that expense.
The hot lunch program was funded, not by the Department of Education, as one might think, but by the Department of Defense. Its purpose was not to keep us healthy learners as the concept of “a hungry child can’t learn,” wasn’t in vogue. It was borne out of the need to insure that our generation could provide enough healthy cannon fodder when the time came, and that the girls would become brood stock for another generation of soldiers. The Great Depression had created so many malnourished youngsters, you see, that the government was alarmed at the number of young men rejected medically for military service during World War II.
Lunches at home were pretty mundane. In addition to what I’ve described above, there was Franco American spaghetti, a plate of elbow macaroni with orange shake cheese or good old, healthy baloney. We didn’t expect any more than that, and we knew what it was, even though no one had ever seen a healthy balone, from which the baloney came, grazing in a pasture.
One nearly forgotten rainy day in the first grade, I did not want to walk home in my heavy, oil skin raincoat with hat that didn’t turn when my head did, giving me a limited field of vision, so I conned a quarter out of my mother to eat a hot lunch. At noon, I watched the walkers leave, lined up and filed to the cafeteria with those, who were already veterans of the lunch room. As we neared the first floor, my nose was assaulted by a warm, damp smell. I stood in line, received from one of the hair-netted lunch ladies a thick, white plate with a green band, which I could barely hold, and shuffled down the line as the food was ladled onto the plate. At the end of the line I was given a ½ pint glass bottle of milk. I found a seat with some of my friends, some of whom started to eat, and looked at the plate. There was a distinguishable glop of what looked like mashed potatoes, unlumpy like my mothers. Over this was spread a mass of brown. Yup, brown it was. I suppose it was meat and gravy, but to a finicky first grader, any thing unrecognizable was nauseating. I picked at it, drank the milk, developed a roaring headache and was scolded by some female authority figure as I emptied an almost full plate into the trash when the bell rang.
At home that night, I still felt sick, and my father, like most of his generation to whom the three squares a day of army food were a welcome relief from the poverty of their childhoods, was not sympathetic. “When you get into the army,” he warned, “You’ll eat it or starve.” I heaved at that.
From then on, I avoided staying in for lunch until junior high, when a 20 minute lunch period and a two mile round trip walk forced me to bring a lunch and watch others try to put the meals down. We were now eating out of bilious green sectional trays and the milk bottles had become cartons. The meal I remember the most, not only because of its frequency, but because to this day I’ve never seen anything as revolting served to free citizens. It was called, “Canadian bacon.” It was, in reality, fried baloney, and so help me the edges of it were gray-green.
The food in the Army, by the way, with the exception of the C-ration of ham and lima beans, was pretty good. One of my first extra duties as a lieutenant was mess officer, and later in the reserves, I served as director of instruction at the Army’s food service school at Ft. Lee, VA. But… Anything after those school hot lunches would have been good.
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