What Does Safe Look Like?
I am not sure I know what safe looks like today, but my childhood neighborhood was safe. In fact, Berkeley, California in the 1950s was positively idyllic. Dads worked, moms stayed home, and kids walked a few blocks to school. Some kids had metal lunch boxes, but we took our lunches in brown paper lunch sacks, and our sandwiches were wrapped in waxed paper bags that often got a little soggy if the mayonnaise leaked from our tuna sandwiches.
Why? Back then, the sandwich bread Mom used was an airy, pure white, textureless, thin-sliced loaf named “Wonder Bread,” which wouldn’t be allowed on a shelf in any self-respecting health food grocery store these days. Oh, wait. I guess they still do make and sell it. My bad. Target carries it, for instance. However, my mom didn’t have many alternatives. Besides, Mom’s mom (we called her Gra Gra because my brother Bob couldn’t say grandmother) worked at Wonder Bread as a secretary, and we got lots of free bread. By the way, did I ever tell you how good it smelled at the Wonder Bread factory? We’d often pick up Gra Gra from work, and oh my gosh, even plain white bread smells GREAT when it’s just out of the oven.
I strayed from talking about what “safe” looks like, didn’t I?
Okay, so we dashed to the playground first thing when we got to the K-6 elementary school, John Muir. The playground’s cracked cement surface…
