Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Day 243 CJSM-book III


Day 243

 

 

Schumeister’s Bakery---peanut cakes

 

 

4-years of high school found me and three classmates eating lunch together in the back room of “Mom & Pop’s” café in old downtown Waterloo; they had a 50¢ special offering the patron a hamburger and fries with a Coke, a full meal for a high school kid. We played pinochle as we dined on the delectable food-fare. After our meal and card game, we trekked across the wide street to Schumeister’s Bakery where the elderly matron happily served “her” noon-day boys with the bakery’s signature peanut cake.

My card-sharp trio of friends each ordered the lunch-“special” which cost half a dollar, with tax, it came to 52¢. My Dad gave me 50¢ for lunch each day, so I could not afford the “special”. I ordered a hamburger and a Coke which left me with a dime to split a peanut cake; Dad would have given me the additional money for tax and, even, the dessert, but, I never told him of my dining-dilemma. I felt horrible taking money, as it was. Thanks! Dad! I owe you.

The dessert cost 20¢; we bought two of the cakes, each of the 4-some investing a dime; our server dutifully sliced the large confections in half (down the middle, the “long” way). Sustenance-in-hand, the quad-gang headed on down yonder to “Sealtest” Dairy Bar where the “Public”-school kids congregated for lunch where we sashayed amongst the horde of myriad non-Catholics while eyeing the “forbidden-fruit” offerings and punching guys in the arm.

Education leads to knowledge! I sure enough got some “street-smarts” on the adventure-way!

Some years later, but not too many, I introduced my progeny to the delights of Schumeister’s peanut-cake; I even had the clerk cut them in half (the long way); the kids loved it---me, too!

 

Ah! Cookie Jar Sweet “peanut-cake dessert” Memories!


 

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