Blog number 181 03 June 2008
During the good war, you couldn't buy roasted peanuts - don't ask me why, so if you wanted a peanut-like snack, you had to settle for roasted soybeans. They came in packets like peanuts, and the first few tasted pretty good, but after a few, the taste got kinda nasty. I was never able to eat a whole package at once like I could easily do with peanuts.
In Des Moines there was a black-coated long bearded man - surely a Jew, that used to come around with a cart buying paper, rags, grease, rubber - almost anything. Metals too. A living stereotype which I recognized as such even at the age of ten or eleven. Of course I didn't think of him as a stereotype - I didn't know what that word meant, even. I just knew he was exactly like the idea of a Jewish rag picker.
The corner Mom and Pop store stored - I guess they bought and sold, old rubber tires. We used to play in the stacks. You could go way down deep into a pile of tires. Occasionally you would get a little wet from water in them, but thankfully, Iowa doesn''t have black widow spiders, 'cause they sure would have been in there.
Lots of memories goIng around in my head just now, but seems like too much work to write about them. Things like Tarzan movies and Bud Cathewood getting caught by a barber for trying to steal money from the cash register and complaining because the barber said he tried to steal cigarettes too and Bud swore he didn't. Bud seemed real pissed at the barber for lying. Getting caught stealing money didn't bother Bud at all.
Lots of memories.
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4 comments:
We used to have "rag pickers" come down our street, too, when I was a little girl. Also, we could buy fresh strawberries and...of course...ice cream! The dry cleaner came to pick up or deliver our clothing to us. And our doctor came to our home when we were sick. All good memories. ---angel
I can remember the first time I tasted ice cream. I don't know how old I was - maybe two or so.
Do you remember "ice boxes?" And milk that had cream on the top that had to be shaken before one could drink it? My grandmother always baked bread for the family meals as well as homemade apple pie. Yum! ---angel
Yeah. We had an ice box. And milk bottles with cream on top and when it froze the cream would be sticking way up with the cap on top - likie Marge Simpson wearing a hat.
I miss the ice cream carts that used to come by and the man would give us a little piece of dry ice to play with.
I remember when my mother discovered garlic. We all raved about the taste of spaghetti and meat balls and she kept putting more and more garlic in because it tasted so good and then one time she put in too much and it was kinda sickening. I don't remember ever having spaghetti and meat balls after that last meal.
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