Looking Forward & Looking Back

While sitting at the gas station getting the car filled with fuel, I realized that I was facing some of our history. Years ago the Alta Dena Express: Neighborhood Dairy Store was just the "Grandview Drive-thru Dairy." It's where Mr. Fun had worked for a short time just a couple of months before we were married.

Numerous times Mr. Fun has told me stories of working at the dairy. He worked evenings there with a buddy named Dale. The photo doesn't really reveal it, but there are two car lanes one on each side of the mini-store. So people could drive-up from either direction, stay in their car, and purchase milk, dairy products, potato chips, beer, and cigarrettes. The guys would run and get whatever the customer ordered. When the store closed each evening at 9:00 the closing procedure was to wet down the cement driveways to clean them.

Mr. Fun and Dale often took advantage of those "wet-down" moments to turn the drive-thru into a "race-thru." They'd slide their cars through sideways! Mr. Fun drove a '56 Ford station wagon and Dale drive an old Volvo station wagon/panel truck. When I asked, "How did you keep from crashing into the building?" The answer is "I have no idea. I just know that boys will be boys." He and Dale were absolutely crazy.

He tells the story of the owner, John, coming in numerous times during those evenings and taking money out of the cash drawer. He was a heavy drinker and needed cash. So the next day John's wife, who managed the books, would phone and ask Mr. Fun or Dale about the missing $50 from the cash box and they'd explain that her husband had come it and taken it. She told them that when that happened they just needed to hand him a paper and pencil and have him write a note with the amount of money he was taking and sign the note then the books would balance. So the next time John the owner came in, they handed him paper and pencil. He stuffed those in his pocket, took the amount of money he wanted, hopped in his car, and was gone. When the wife phoned the next day, she asked why they hadn't had him sign a piece of paper. They told her he stuffed it in his pocket and left.

As the gasoline pumped into my car this afternoon, I sat there staring at the dairy reminiscing about some crazy times of yesteryear and somewhat amused that this building is still here and the business is still a dairy, even though it is now owner by someone else.

Pretty stupid, huh!

Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol