Reading the complaint of a parent, concerning the non-provision of meals at the child's school during the final days of the last term, set me reminiscing about my own school meals.I wondered if journalists Paolo Kernahan, Lennox Grant or Raoul Pantin ever heard of a 16-cents lunch.I believe that only the last mentioned may have had an inkling of it.
Boysie, at the junction of Warren and Kelly Kenny streets, served up a sliced six cents loaf, sparsely smeared with salt butter and even more thinly covered with a layer of cheese, (some of us still claim that one could see through it), pepper optional, and home-made juice, in a beer bottle, for the princely sum of 16 cents.For his ultra-thin cheese slicing Boysie could have given lessons in transparency.
It was amazing that this meal provided the energy for me to biff ball after school, with the likes of Ewart Williams, and bowl fast (pelt), against Stephen Almandoz, groan through the Angelus led by Prefect Farfan, and afterwards, run from Mucurapo to the PoS railway station to catch the 6.30 pm train.And I still had change from my one shilling daily allowance to buy a packet of Crispy's nuts for four cents!
Manny Joseph