Just Plain Bill

Limburger Sandwich for 10 Cents

Eighteen years ago, my wife and I purchased a two-story, four-bedroom, two-bath home in San Leandro, California, built in 1929. As the second owner in 1999, we found several artifacts that had been left by the prior owner’s father in his small basement heater room and workshop.

In addition to an old, wool NY Yankees baseball cap (made long before cotton caps with adjustable head sizes), I found a menu for the Dimond Inn (spelling correct), a small restaurant in a neighborhood in nearby Oakland. The one page, two-sided menu, headed with GENERAL BILL OF FARE, was printed on heavy card stock, which I’m sure helped it survive in good shape for what I estimate to be at least 50 years. (The printer’s phone number started with a name, Highgate, and did not have a prefix.)

I found the menu items and prices quite fascinating. A few examples included the following: chicken tamale, 35 cents, baked ham and beans, 20 cents, minced hamburger and egg sandwich, 25 cents, root beer, 5 cents, homemade pie, 10 cents, and a bottle of Golden West Sharp Steam (on draught), for 10 cents. And the limburger sandwich; the fragrance of limburger cheese reminds many of dirty wool socks, but was, interestingly enough, one my father’s favorite cheeses. (Haven’t seen that item on any menu through the nearly eight decades of my life.)

I’m guessing the year of the menu was sometime after 1933, after the end of Prohibition, when the buying and selling of alcoholic beverages was prohibited in the United States, and before Oakland addresses included numbers designating their city region, and the change of numbers for names and prefixes in phone numbers.

I checked out what is now located at the previous site of the restaurant at 3449 Fruitvale Avenue, in Oakland, California (an address before the days of zip codes). It’s now a cocktail lounge, in an area that is still providing retail services of all types, including a large grocery store, a Peet’s Coffee house, a gas station, hardware store, barber shop, beauty parlor, and a few bars, with few examples of gentrification that is spreading in many communities.

This was a fun look back at what life was like in the days before my birth.    

Just Plain Bill

“The best way to learn something…”

The best way to learn something is to teach somebody!

This statement has been voiced by many sources over the years and stems from the Latin principle, Docendo discimus, “By teaching we learn.”

A lifelong educator, I was recently reminded of this truism when I assumed a seven-week, long-term substitute assignment with a third-grade class. In addition to their regular teacher who was in and out of class since the beginning of the school year, the students had three substitutes before me –– and I was challenged with helping them get “settled”, and “catching them up” with the grade level expectations. The vice principal also hoped I could “rekindle” the students’ beliefs in their abilities to do good work, and enhance their “love of school.”

Starting with math, I learned there were eight students who were competent and were working ahead in the math book. Next, I noticed a different group of ten students who’d mastered the next unit in the language book. And finally, a similar group demonstrated exceptional writing skills.

In consultation with the whole class, we established a “master” designation for these disciplines, and students were eager to serve as tutors for colleagues in need of assistance.

I was pleasantly surprised that most of the students designated as “masters” understood my suggestion that they first ask what their colleagues did not understand, then show them how to complete assigned tasks, and then allow their colleagues to apply their new skills… not just have the work done for them by their tutors. (That was a long-winded description of the simple approach I use in teaching: Ask, show, and perform.)

Once again, I was thrilled by the solutions to many learning challenges residing right before my eyes, by the competencies and the helping attitudes of the students – as teachers.

Just Plain Bill

Anomie

Every once in a while, I recall something learned in one of my college courses.

Tragedies like the Orlando nightclub and Charleston church shootings elicit the recall… events perpetrated by individuals who seemed to have acted from an absence of morality, with little guidance from the norms of the majority of ordinary people.

I wonder if the term “anomie” would apply?  

My Criminology course from my Sociology studies examined Anomie, a term coined by Émile Durkheim that describes the absence of social norms, often resulting in the expression of rejection, that could include a deadly response as well.

We spend hours trying to identify the cause of these tragedies, looking for the “why”, as if this identification could help provide some understanding of a person’s actions.

From my work with youth in the Boys Clubs, YMCA, and throughout my teaching and training career, I’ve always been intrigued with the vast differences of morals and values that are instilled in vulnerable young people by family and relationships. Fortunately, I’ve not been directly impacted by this absence of social norms, and I haven’t had to counsel others in this regard either.

I hope and pray that this condition of anomie remains only a theory in my life.