Oral History and Oreo Shakes

I guess you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but can you ever take the classroom out of the teacher?

Had a really unusual classroom a few months ago when Ethan, Davis, and Maddie were with us at the Jack-In-The-Box at the corner of Orangethorpe and Placentia Blvd. My motives were not totally pure, a little manipulative maybe, but than I love Oreo shakes, and I wanted to let my Grands know a little more about our family. We hopped in there, and not wanting to load them with too much sugar, we ordered one shake and three straws. And sat and talked about the family.



Not only was I teaching about the family history, - Don's grandmother, Mattie Judson, owned the property which was all orange groves - but I wanted to help them understand a little more about time.



Don's mother was born in 1900. Davis was born in 2000. That's 100 years. A century. I never knew Don's grandmother, but I want my Grands to rememeber me. So I sat there, feeling like a fulcrum, as I talked with the Grands about Grandma Judson, how she was widowed, but still a good business woman supporting herself and her small daughter, and watched the children drink a Cousin-Three-Straw-Oreo Shake.



I told them how Don's parents sold off the 9 and 1/2 acres for an automobile agency when they retired, and lived off the proceeds, but kept the corner piece for further development. I think Grandpa Earl was a good business man, too. He had a lot of foresight, but not enough to worry about oil prices, soil contamination and all of that. No one could have known all that.

So he first put a gas station on the corner.



Then 20 years later, we inherited the property, and had to deal with all the contamination from the old leaky tanks.



We dealt with:




The Environmental Protection Agency



The State Water Control Board



The Orange County Health Association



The City of Placentia



Finally, everything was in order, and the people at Foodmaker, Inc. (Jack-in-the-Box) said they were ready to build.



So now once a year, the city license comes, we take it down, give it to the manager, and sometimes get an "owner discount" on our lunch. We look at the area, think of it as orange trees, and no freeways, and the stress of what we went through hardly comes to mind.



I hope the Grands will take their children to "our" restaurant, and tell them about their family history. I'm so glad they won't have to go through all the horrors of cleanup, and maybe there will be a new favorite flavor of shakes by that time, too.



But I doubt it. I think Oreo Shakes are here to stay.

I wonder if they'll make their kids share?!