{"id":1205,"date":"2014-04-16T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T06:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=1205"},"modified":"2014-04-16T15:24:55","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T09:24:55","slug":"lack-toast-and-tolerant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=1205","title":{"rendered":"Lack toast . . . and tolerant"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a trip last weekend to Missouri, my wife and I were among the last breakfast eaters on the Amtrak unit, their probably having run out of items on the menu. I chose toast with my omelet but received a (not-too-shabby) croissant instead.<\/span><\/p>\n

The waitperson explained that earlier diners had consumed the railway\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supply of toast and therefore, all they had to offer were the croissants. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We lack toast,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the waitress said, in a manner that seemed as if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d said it before and was expecting a cute reply. That gave me an opening to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m tolerant.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Almost as if we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rehearsed the dialogue, we put together \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lack toast and tolerant,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is the way some people render the condition of being \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lactose intolerant.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

That was good for a chuckle. It also triggered questions as to why today my consuming ice cream often leads to an hours-long belch-o-rama within my intestines. Am I \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lack toast and tolerant?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I ask myself. It may have started decades ago when ice cream was a luxury.<\/p>\n

In my youth, we lived across the street from E. Pe\u00c3\u00b1a\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Grocery \u00e2\u20ac\u201d there were grocery stores on virtually every corner of Las Vegas, back in the days when we used to eat dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

One of the Pe\u00c3\u00b1a children, Ernesto (Teto), the legend goes, found a $20 bill under a mattress and accordingly treated the entire neighborhood to a feast that would take place on the triangle on Grand, Third and Columbia, where Workforce Solutions sits. Several of us went to the Creamery, an ice cream place where Quality Motors used car lot resides.<\/p>\n

The volunteers returned with gallon containers of hand-packed ice cream, chips, hot dogs and soft drinks. My lust for ice cream knew no limits that day. So, thanks to Ernesto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s windfall, we ate and drank to satiety.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n

One other ice cream event occurred to me, coincidentally, just this week. Amid all the excitement of the purchase of the Hotel Casta\u00c3\u00b1eda, the name Fred Harvey has surfaced. Harvey was the entrepreneur who developed Harvey House lunchrooms, restaurants and hotels, the local Casta\u00c3\u00b1eda being an original Harvey House.<\/p>\n

My exposure to the Harvey name came in the form of a misunderstanding about who exactly was the wealthy man who operated restaurants and hotels in several states.<\/p>\n

Let me explain:<\/p>\n

In the olden days, precious few people owned refrigerators; rather, many owned iceboxes. So long was that item a part of our household and meal planning that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve caught myself saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ice box\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve in fact owned a real fridge or two in our lifetime. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 When my parents bought their first fridge, the hoopla was tantamount to the celebration taking place this week, over the Casta\u00c3\u00b1eda, the building recently purchased by hotelier Allan Affeldt and his partners.<\/p>\n

Every Saturday evening, in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc40s, my dad explained to us, local railroad workers received a bonus with their paycheck: a gallon of ice cream from the train, as their shift ended. A neighbor, who worked at the station and lived close to the Casta\u00c3\u00b1eda, owned a fridge but apparently didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care much for ice cream.<\/p>\n

Therefore, every Sunday morning, Dad would whip out a dollar, which I delivered to the fridge-owning neighbor in exchange for a gallon of ice cream. A gallon is an enormous amount, and it was still quite solid by the time I took it home. As we dipped into the first gallon of vanilla, Dad announced, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This ice cream comes courtesy of Fred Harvey.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Even though we PAID a dollar for it, Dad still referred to the exchange as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153courtesy of,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153compliments of.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

For years, I simply assumed it was Fred Harvey himself who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d greet me each Sunday at his house by Railroad and Columbia for the creamy exchange. Dad, probably thinking my misunderstanding was cute, never corrected me when sending me \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to Fred Harvey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house to pick up ice cream.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Strange, but from what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d heard about the hotelier and restaurateur, I was surprised about this humble man whose wife called him Larry, in a modest house, who traded a gallon for a dollar.<\/p>\n

We had some neighbor school friends, Levi, Chris and Anthony, whom we invited over to share ice cream, at the shelf life of that treat was brief. We timed the ice deliveries to coincide with the ice cream arrival. So, when the Iceman Cometh, we partied.<\/p>\n

Our friends also had a modest icebox that kept the food just a few degrees below room temperature. And once, when we dropped by, Levi spread ice cream over some slices of bread, as if it were peanut butter.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you ever heard of an ice cream sandwich?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Levi asked, as the rest of us looked at him incredulously. An ice cream sandwich, in our parlance, was not something spread like jelly over a slice of Rainbow Bread but a combination of ice cream and a chocolate or vanilla cookie, frozen solid, costing a dime, and available only at the Serf Theater.<\/p>\n

On movie Saturdays, Dad provided my siblings, Bingy and Severino, and me with 78 cents, providing us an extra dime apiece after paying our admission fee of 16 cents. Sometimes we chose popcorn, for a dime; a candy bar and a Coke sold for a nickel each, and on occasion, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d save the dime to buy a balsa wood airplane at Funk\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, the 5-and-Dime store next to Murphey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a trip last weekend to Missouri, my wife and I were among the last breakfast eaters on the Amtrak unit, their probably having run out of items on the menu. I chose toast with my omelet but received a (not-too-shabby) croissant instead. The waitperson explained that earlier diners had consumed the railway\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supply of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1206,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions\/1206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}