This Is What Democracy Looks Like
'Postcards' from a protest, more from Route 66, plus a teaser for a new way of making cookies
For this Father’s Day I had planned another deep dive into my dad’s history based on some 90-year-old German letters I’ve discovered and am doing my best to decipher with the help of Google Translate. It has turned out to be very slow going—and just about impossible when it came to those letters that were handwritten instead of typed. (If you know any experts in German script from the 1930s, I’d love to hear from you!) In any case, I don’t want to rush it—the search is too interesting. Don’t we all want to know more about what our parents were like before we entered the picture? Meanwhile, if you’re interested, here’s a piece I wrote about my immigrant family (on my father’s side) a few months ago:
There has been a lot going on in this corner of the world (i.e., Los Angeles) to distract us from happy celebrations. What hasn’t been going on are riots or an insurrection, though you might not know it after watching the news and seeing driverless Waymo cars in flames or walls of police and National Guard troops in combat gear.
Los Angeles covers some 500 square miles and the unrest has been confined to a few blocks downtown. While there have been some bad actors (in LA, they might actually be actors!), most folks are lawfully protesting against the cruel, disruptive and, in some cases, illegal and inhumane immigration raids occurring at worksites, warehouses, restaurants, swap meets, carwashes and even private residences.
It seems that almost anyone with brown skin is scared—and with good reason. Even those who are citizens, either through naturalization or being born here, or have green cards or permits allowing them to be in this country, might get scooped up in these immigration raids based on how they look.
At the crowded but peaceful rally I attended with my friend Susie in Torrance, a city about 19 miles southwest of downtown LA, one young woman who is a recipient of protective DACA1 designation told me she is filled with anxiety for her parents who have been in this country for years but have been unable to obtain legal status. “I do all their shopping and errands,” she said. “They’re afraid to go out now.”
While there were some 2,000 protests planned around the U.S. Saturday, timed to coincide with the president’s controversial military parade celebrating the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday and his own 79th, there were also events taking place outside the U.S. My cousin’s daughter Avigail attended one in Paris and took some terrific pictures of protesters flamboyantly costumed for the occasion, as you might expect in the stylish City of Light. The French do seem to love a good protest, especially against anyone who behaves like a king!
A local Route 66 landmark
Time for something a little lighter than protesting a would-be monarch, don’t you think? Though I said my series on the Mother Road was finally over, we realized we’d overlooked one historic spot along the famed highway in Pasadena, Fair Oaks Pharmacy & Soda Fountain. Of course we had to pay a visit and sample just one more milkshake!
Still a working pharmacy, as it was back when it opened as the South Pasadena Pharmacy in 1915, eleven years before the birth of Route 66, it’s also a delight for anyone wanting to try some of the old-fashioned fountain drinks and sodas you may have heard about and have them served by an actual uniform-clad soda “jerk.” In reality he wasn’t a jerk at all then or now; he was the guy (usually a young man) who mixed the drinks.
The term was a play on the job title “soda clerk” and referred to the jerking motion the worker made when he pulled on the levers of the machine to squirt soda into the glass. Our soda jerk demonstrated this technique with élan. (Sorry, no video, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my husband Jeff will share some footage in one of his upcoming Photowalks episodes playing soon on YouTube and Scripps News.)
At this particular shop, the menu included all manner of drinks I wanted to try—the classic deli egg cream made of carbonated chocolate milk and no eggs or cream despite the name; a Coca-Cola sundae with vanilla ice cream, pure coke syrup, gummies and whipped cream; a root beer float; a lime rickey, and a Cookie Jar Sundae: a cookie with hot fudge and whipped cream. Yum-eee!
We settled for a chocolate malt: several “hand-dipped” scoops (apparently that means scooped by a human being!) of vanilla ice cream blended with milk, chocolate syrup and malt powder. Scrumptious, though unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of it.
I did take a lot of others though, including of some of the large variety of old-style candies that took me back to childhood when I was a “baby Ruth” in my own right and used to buy as much penny candy as I could (yes, it really existed!) with my allowance of one thin dime at the our local pharmacy in Palo Alto. That was long, long ago, though not all that far away, when Palo Alto was a sleepy little university town, not the heart of the Silicon Valley universe that it is today.
Meanwhile, here’s wishing you a very peaceful and enjoyable week. I’ll be back soon with more on a new, very simple way of making cookies that blew my mind. It may actually be an old method that I’m just discovering because I’m slow to change my ways. I’ll have to do a bit more research so that I’m not making a fool of myself by declaring something new that isn’t. Meanwhile, here’s a teaser picture of some chocolate chunk cookies I made using that method. They were highly rated by all who tasted them. Now I’m wondering how they’d be in a Cookie Jar Sundae!
Til next time, thanks so much for reading, liking, sharing and commenting. Most of all, thanks for your subscriptions and for sharing your enjoyment of this blog. This week has been particularly challenging in our world, our country, our state, and in my personal life. But I have high hopes for next week. Hope you do too. Stay safe and try to be positive.
Ruth😘
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—DACA—passed in 2012 under the Obama administration and now under threat—has allowed some 834,000 undocumented young immigrants brought here as children to work and go about their lives without fear of deportation.
Thanks, Jolene! Yes, let’s hear it for chocolate chip cookies—a great mood lifter!🍪 Thanks for restocking my note too!😘
As always, beautifully written and reported, Ruth. Strange days, indeed. Here’s to chocolate chip cookies. ❤️