Chapter Two--The Meeting
Here I would like to fill in a little historical detail. I write some of this not to be telling so much about myself as to try to picture for my grand ones and great grand ones (when they get big enough to read) some concepts about the way it was then, so they can have some means of comparison of life today.
I had made it through my senior year of high school in Dallas working and going to school mainly because I liked to have some money to spend and because my folks did not have it nor did they see the need of putting any in my pockets. However, they did provide basic necessities, a place to sleep and food to eat, for which I am grateful. They also insisted on me getting an education and they provided for it as best that they could.
As I recall the first semester I rode the bus from school downtown to my job at a drive-in root beer establishment. One of dad’s church members owned the place and he gave me a great job at fifty cents and hour from 4:00 P. M. until closing and cleanup at somewhere between 11:30 and midnight, depending on how busy we had been. I would get home and set my alarm for 5:00 A.M., get up, study a bit and catch a bus to school. Saturdays were much easier.
I was taking photography in high school (it was a technical high school), so I decided to get a job in my field. I got a job at Browne and Browne on Main Street that day. I was hired to develop the film each day after school. The job entailed working with cut-film holders in the dark and putting the exposed film through the developer, stop and fixer with a timer. I also had to load all the holders for the next day’s run, mix the chemicals when they went flat and then sweep the floor if I had time before 5:30 P.M. I also had to work on Saturday. I think the pay was something like $10.00 a week. Sometimes I would take the Speed Graphic (this was a 4” x 5” large format camera that used cut-film holders, with a battery operated flash unit that fired flash bulbs in sequence with the shutter opening) out in the evening and do a shoot at a school dance or some such function for a little extra money. That job enabled me to stay in Dallas and finish high school when about January of that year, the folks moved to Springtown. So, today, when I pick up my little light-weight digital camera that somehow takes great pictures without the benefit of silver halide salts and just sends the images via a wire to my computer, I marvel at how far we have come and wonder what is next.
I got to Abilene in September of that year and even before enrolling in school I got a job in a downtown cafeteria as assistant fry cook. I guess they liked my experience in the fast food business. I did not really like that job since it required working late at night cleaning up the kitchen after a hard dinner run. I think the pay was still fifty cents an hour. Within a few months I had moved on up to soda fountain “manager” at fifty five cents at a drugstore right across the street from the campus of ACC (now ACU).
I worked behind one of those (what is now considered old-fashioned) soda fountains with a marble counter about 20 feet long with little round stools for the customers. The back side, or business side of the counter had a large freezer for ice cream and an ice machine. The freezer had little doors to open up for access to the five-gallon cartons of ice cream in different flavors. There were pumps that you just push down and squirt whatever syrup into a glass with ice in it for a coke or then go the cherry pump for a cheery coke, or the root beer pump, or the strawberry pump for what ever flavor or flavors that were ordered and then to the carbonated stuff so it would be fizzy. At the very back end was a grille for hamburgers or tuna fish sandwiches or sometimes we made soup or stew. There were three (I think) malt mixers and a place for dishes and cups and glasses and cones. It was quite an operation and one could get real busy with 10 or 15 people all wanting different things at once between classes.
This one high school student (enter Carolyn from stage right again) would come in almost every morning and she would order a box of Post Toasties (you know those little one-serving kind you get in restaurants) and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I thought that a bit of an oddity for a breakfast, but there is no accounting for individual tastes. I was interested in knowing her better, but that was just not the way it was done in 1956. As fortune would have it, I had become acquainted with some of the fellows in her classes and finally asked one of them to formally introduce me to her. He did. And we did date some, but I understand that she was cautious (as I learned later, she was told I was pretty wild, working behind the soda fountain and all that). It took some doing, but soon we hit it off pretty well.
Now I am not sure at this juncture whether it was the Post Toasties or the vanilla ice cream, but to tell you the truth, I was smitten.
I had made it through my senior year of high school in Dallas working and going to school mainly because I liked to have some money to spend and because my folks did not have it nor did they see the need of putting any in my pockets. However, they did provide basic necessities, a place to sleep and food to eat, for which I am grateful. They also insisted on me getting an education and they provided for it as best that they could.
As I recall the first semester I rode the bus from school downtown to my job at a drive-in root beer establishment. One of dad’s church members owned the place and he gave me a great job at fifty cents and hour from 4:00 P. M. until closing and cleanup at somewhere between 11:30 and midnight, depending on how busy we had been. I would get home and set my alarm for 5:00 A.M., get up, study a bit and catch a bus to school. Saturdays were much easier.
I was taking photography in high school (it was a technical high school), so I decided to get a job in my field. I got a job at Browne and Browne on Main Street that day. I was hired to develop the film each day after school. The job entailed working with cut-film holders in the dark and putting the exposed film through the developer, stop and fixer with a timer. I also had to load all the holders for the next day’s run, mix the chemicals when they went flat and then sweep the floor if I had time before 5:30 P.M. I also had to work on Saturday. I think the pay was something like $10.00 a week. Sometimes I would take the Speed Graphic (this was a 4” x 5” large format camera that used cut-film holders, with a battery operated flash unit that fired flash bulbs in sequence with the shutter opening) out in the evening and do a shoot at a school dance or some such function for a little extra money. That job enabled me to stay in Dallas and finish high school when about January of that year, the folks moved to Springtown. So, today, when I pick up my little light-weight digital camera that somehow takes great pictures without the benefit of silver halide salts and just sends the images via a wire to my computer, I marvel at how far we have come and wonder what is next.
I got to Abilene in September of that year and even before enrolling in school I got a job in a downtown cafeteria as assistant fry cook. I guess they liked my experience in the fast food business. I did not really like that job since it required working late at night cleaning up the kitchen after a hard dinner run. I think the pay was still fifty cents an hour. Within a few months I had moved on up to soda fountain “manager” at fifty five cents at a drugstore right across the street from the campus of ACC (now ACU).
I worked behind one of those (what is now considered old-fashioned) soda fountains with a marble counter about 20 feet long with little round stools for the customers. The back side, or business side of the counter had a large freezer for ice cream and an ice machine. The freezer had little doors to open up for access to the five-gallon cartons of ice cream in different flavors. There were pumps that you just push down and squirt whatever syrup into a glass with ice in it for a coke or then go the cherry pump for a cheery coke, or the root beer pump, or the strawberry pump for what ever flavor or flavors that were ordered and then to the carbonated stuff so it would be fizzy. At the very back end was a grille for hamburgers or tuna fish sandwiches or sometimes we made soup or stew. There were three (I think) malt mixers and a place for dishes and cups and glasses and cones. It was quite an operation and one could get real busy with 10 or 15 people all wanting different things at once between classes.
This one high school student (enter Carolyn from stage right again) would come in almost every morning and she would order a box of Post Toasties (you know those little one-serving kind you get in restaurants) and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I thought that a bit of an oddity for a breakfast, but there is no accounting for individual tastes. I was interested in knowing her better, but that was just not the way it was done in 1956. As fortune would have it, I had become acquainted with some of the fellows in her classes and finally asked one of them to formally introduce me to her. He did. And we did date some, but I understand that she was cautious (as I learned later, she was told I was pretty wild, working behind the soda fountain and all that). It took some doing, but soon we hit it off pretty well.
Now I am not sure at this juncture whether it was the Post Toasties or the vanilla ice cream, but to tell you the truth, I was smitten.
posted by David R. Snow at 4:58 PM
13 Comments:
Nice! And you sure know how to leave your readers hanging! Did you know this was the way Dickens wrote a lot of his stuff? Serial chapters in magazines...See? You're in very good company. Can't wait for the next chapter....
PS: Thanks for fixing it so I can blather on at you directly.
Aw, shucks.
Betty:
Thanks for the encouragement, and may you continue to blather on!
Poppy there is still a soda fountain much like the one you describe open in Cooper, Texas. It is still run by a lady who has worked there 50 or 60 years, and she still makes all her own ice cream. John and I stopped in one day, and I got my first taste of a real milkshake and a real hand made coke. It was like stepping back in time, and I bet it would be even more like that for you. Next time y'all are down my way, we could go.
Yeah, thanks, Dave for fixing your site so Betty can post on her own.
I loved the part about the Cheery Coke. Lord knows we would not want our cokes to be depressed and down-in-the-mouth...:-)
I just want to know if Uncle Herb knew Susie was eating Post Toasties and Ice Cream for breakfast. Can't remember that being a staple in Topeka.
Cool story. I am a little unsure of the cronology. You say all this happened before I was born, but nothing of importance happened until I got here, but this sounds important, so are sure it didn't happen later?
You know how it is, David. Kids rebel when they leave home. My other big one when I had my own kitchen was to eat more than that 1/2 cup serving size that Jello Pudding makes. I always wanted to make my own decisions, and cereal with ice cream was a big step.
Russell: These are THE very events, except for which, you would NOT exist. Note the plot in "A wonderful life" when Stewart's character was allowed to view a world without his existence and influence. In fact, if we dwell on it for a while, it becomes clear that our very life, indeed each of our individual lives' very existences depended upon a certain set of circumstance occurring at a precise moment in history. A miracle? Yes, I choose to believe so.
Sorry, got carried away there.
And David: looks like my spell-check did it again with the cheery coke. Who know, maybe we are on to something!
You are right, Dave--you should contact Coca-Cola and suggest they come out with Cheery Coke.
I understand the spell check problem. Notice Russell misspelled chronology. I just posted on Snow Story and did not preview, and found a misspelled word, so I had to go back and delete the post and re-post, or listen to the Blog owner's catty remarks to the "English Major."
Well, that explains who withdrew a comment.
I do not challenge all mistakes. Should I do that to maintain my evil reputation?
When do we get the next installment of this great love story?
Speaking of which, I saw the movie Love Story on TCM recently, and I just do not believe the line "love is never having to say you're sorry." At least not human love. If it were true, there would be no experience of love anywhere.
Quality, accuracy and prose that generates a desire for more takes time.
So true, so true. How well I know.
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