Wonderful essay in today's Los Angeles Times by Lakewood city spokesman Don Waldie, who writes as D.J. Waldie. He looks back on the times when bakery trucks rolled into the city's tracks and housewives walked to the store since they couldn't drive or didn't own a car. Waldie grew up among the frugal survivors of the Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Of course, Lakewood, with its Restaurant Row and multiple grocers, has grown into a food Mecca of sorts, but Waldie nicely remembers the era of limited choices:
The Boys Market at the distant end of my block had long aisles of packaged and canned goods, but the fresh vegetable counters still followed the seasons. Heads of iceberg lettuce -- the only kind available -- dwindled in winter. Corn on the cob arrived only in July. Butcher cuts of local beef weren't very good, and the Farmer John company pitched its pork products as "easternmost in quality, westernmost in flavor." There were times you couldn't get chicken, but you could get rabbit. Fresh fish was hard to find. Cardinal McIntyre in the weekly Catholic Tidings recommended "tunies" (tuna hot dogs) for Lenten Fridays. Some grocery stores showcased an aisle of frozen food, but the Coldspot refrigerator at home had room in its freezer compartment for only two or three rectangular blocks of peas.
