Re: Does anyone remember the St. Francis Riding Academy?

04/21/22 - posted by jb

For me, the joy of milk bottles were two-fold;
Drinking and rattling. We’d stay at Boyes Springs in the late 50’s and were spoiled with the steady stream of chocolate milk and orange drink that would show up, like magic, on the porch from Stornetta Dairy. And yes, at the demand of the dial-a-treat menu stuck into the neck of a “dead soldier” left out overnight. Today, I use instacart and the “Wheel of Treats” resides on my cell phone.

My ecstatic joy, though, came from rattling those porch-pins with a tomahawk-folded News-Call Bulletin. The challenge was to hit, and not break, the glass jugs lounging listlessly in the fog. I became fairly accomplished, although disappointed since the athletic event at which I could compete was as lonely as the long-distant runner.

I’ve, over the years, thought of reliving those glory days with a few pop bottles and a paper grenade but today, my local paper is 4 pages of ads and we are dictated to recycle.

And don’t get me started on the demise of the
Ting-a-Ling man and the crunchy joy of a frozen Drumstick on a cold Summer’s day in Daly City.