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Comments

Jeff

Marion Nestle. Must be her offspring who are here in Salida now trying to truck spring water to a bottling plant in Denver. People are p*ssed, except for those who have sold, or want to sell them, land and water, and those who want to bid on the pipeline from the spring to the road. It's all pretty offensive. Twenty-five tanker trucks a day trucking water to Denver, which of course already has a large and sophisticated water system in place. All so they can say "spring water" on one billion plastic bottles. Will anyone do the math? They will take 200 acre-feet of water; I bet they will sell many times that, conveniently supplemented by the Denver municipal water supply. To think that I once drank Nestle's Quik!

Jeff

The lunch treat at Joe & Pat's sounds great. I don't remember ever getting to do that, although I do remember going to Steven or Susan's house for lunch ... it was on the street right behind/below the playground. Of course, we took our own lunch with us; they didn't feed us. And every now and then, I got to buy a Ring Ding (full size, lots of cream) at that store across the street. Can't think of the name. There was a phone booth in the back of the store. If you recall, the year after we left P.S. 29, a young boy was run over by a bus at the stop right in front of the school at the corner of Slosson and Victory. The driver pushed his way out of the overcrowded bus, saw the boy under the rear wheels, and ran to that phone booth and wouldn't come out. Sorry, that was an unhappy digression. There's a baseline, background smell I associate with school lunch, not quite terrible but not especially welcomed. It was a revelation when I moved to Bernardsville, N.J. and went through the cafeteria for Italian food the first time. The little old Italian ladies who worked in the kitchen made great stuff. It was like a vacation. Anyway, the price point I recall about Joe & Pat's was when outrage was expressed about the price of a large pie going up to $1.25. I think it was around the time that coffee retail prices went over $1/lb for the first time.

John Ptak

I never got those home-lunch invites, but I do remember the big Ring Dings, all filled with cream-like gorgeousness for a dime; I'd buy mine at Stevenson's corner shop rather than the Mauro's market at Slosson. Also I cannot remember ever getting hot lunch in grade school. Surprising thing about those price points though is that they're roughly the same now, CPI-adjusted. Coffee's cheaper for Folgers and such. The Dead Richard N*x*n promised America that we would never pay a dollar for a loaf of bread, and in 1968 money, we haven't, although the loaves are getting markedly smaller. Damn their eyes.

John Ptak

Also, I do remember that boy being run over, but not the details of the bus driver going into the back of Mauro's. It was shocking to be sure for us kids, and something that just never happened.
**Also, I do have a strong olfactory punch when I think of school lunch at PS 29. Something. ALSO also, something about the library, too, a mixture of kids, old books and cig smoke from Mrs. B the librarian.

Jeff

I have this one clear memory of the school library. The librarian had sat us down at the dark, highly polished tables. She was giving us the rules. She said to keep our hands off the tables because she was allergic to fingerprints. When she turned away, I touched the table to see what was left that could possibly cause an allergic reaction. I couldn't have said it in those terms at the time, but that's what I did. Also, if you'll recall, we were limited to the shelves assigned to our grade level. I don't know if one was allowed to move down, but one definitely could not move up. My mother tried to speak with whomever at the school, but that was the rule. So she said, in school read what they say; at home, you can read what you want. It was her same response to Mrs. Janicello's insistence that I hold my pencil in the tripod of my thumb, index, and middle fingers. I had great handwriting at the time, but I held the pencil in four fingers, including my ring finger. She would grab my hand and force my fingers around the pencil. She would not relent, so Mom said, when in school, write that way; at home, write the way you want. As for the bus tragedy, that was the incident that produced the mirrors so that the driver could in the wells of the front and back doors, and the big outside mirror, plus new rules about overcrowding the busses. I don't know it you ever did it, but I know I squeezed in a few times where the door closed and actually pressed me in. This kid was trying to squeeze in, couldn't, the driver had no way to see and drove away, catching the boy's foot and dragging him before he slipped free and was run over.

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