 Sure they have a new science wing, and they're getting a new pool, and they've got a new fieldhouse out at Helm Field. But the students at Los Gatos High School don't have what we used to have as Wildcats, and they never will.
All of those Gatos grads up to about pre-1980 know what I'm talking about—and that includes all of you Saratoga "kids" who attended the school prior to Saratoga High's opening in 1960. Yeah, it's the Foster's Freeze across the street from the campus.
Right where the new Hotel Los Gatos now stands, and where you can get a pretty upscale meal at Kuleto's for about 50 bucks, you used to be able to get a dipped frosty ice cream cone for less than 50 cents.
I bring it up now for a couple of reasons. First, we're going to have a great many graduates in town for the All-Alumni Reunion Weekend at the high school Sept. 1921, so for many of us who survived on burgers, fries and cones during our high school years, remembering our times at Foster's Freeze is right there with recalling Mr. Simonson's push-ups and "Senior Sneak" day at the Boardwalk.
And secondly, Monday is the 100th anniversary of the ice cream cone. And for many of us, the Foster's soft-serve was the first ice cream cone we ever knew. Hey, these were the pre-Baskin Robbins, pre-frozen yogurt and pre-gelato days.
It was a different time. Television commercials blatantly advertised the joys of smoking cigarettes, suggesting that we'd "walk a mile for Camel" and that we'd rather "fight than quit"; gyms were for body builders; and red meat was a staple we ate with just about every meal. We simply weren't as health conscious then as we are now.
Carbs? They didn't exist. Cholesterol? Wasn't that something in our toothpaste? Fat grams? Yeah, we called 'em S'mores in those days.
Hey, who knew?
So we ate French fries ... fried in a deep vat of animal fat. We ate all beef burgers ... slathered in mustard, mayo and ketchup. We drank milkshakes, malts and Coca Cola ... there was no diet coke then. And we ate frosty, soft-serve cones ... dipped, of course, so that they were covered with a thick coat of chocolate.
We ate it all—and we have the clogged arteries to prove it!
What's more, we started young. I remember playing pee wee softball down on the high school diamond. After each game, we visited Foster's Freeze. If we won, we each got 50 cents to spend on a post-game treat—if we lost, we got a quarter. That's when I first learned that winning was way better than losing!
These were the days when Wendy's referred to something that belonged to the character in Peter Pan, when a Jack-In-The-Box was a child's toy and when we sang about McDonald's farm, not a chain of fast-food restaurants. In fact, Foster's was our first taste of fast food, and guess what? We loved it! (But only after school and on weekends—we would never sneak over there during school hours, Mr. Simonson ... honest!)
Sure, the kids today have many more junk food choices, from 7-Eleven to Taco Bell to the king of them all, McDonald's. For us, we just had our hot, greasy fries, thick malts and chocolate dipped cones at Foster's ... and it was right across the street.
But the Main Street Foster's Freeze has gone the way of the Edsell, the poodle skirt and the Bugaloo. And while we may miss the cones and fries, we don't miss the carbs and calories. And we'll always have our memories of a time when we weren't counting our bad cholesterol, just our pennies—because with 25 of them, we could get a small, dipped cone.
Yeah, those were the days.
Want to talk? Call me at 408.354.3110, ext. 31, or drop me a note at dsparrer@svcn.com.
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