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Way back in the '80s, I worked in the kitchen at a little ice cream and lunch counter place called Great Midwestern. Ronald Reagan visited, and declared the blu
by beat 8y ago
Way back in the '80s, I worked in the kitchen at a little ice cream and lunch counter place called Great Midwestern. Ronald Reagan visited, and declared the blueberry ice cream "best ice cream in America" (to be fair, it was really excellent). This led to a big boom in business - and more importantly, mandatory visits by GOP presidential candidates in 1987 Iowa, with all the press circus that involved.
The owners took advantage of their good fortune and sold the business to someone else, who immediately started to "cut costs" by cheapening the ice cream. We went through two or three other owners, eventually landing on an out-of-state mega-dairy that just repackaged the cheap ice cream they sold in grocery stores - still sold as "best ice cream in America", the Ronald Reagan seal of approval.
Luckily, I could at least maintain standards in the kitchen, continuing to deliver all-vegetarian made from scratch soups daily and a nice selection of cold sandwiches made to order. But eventually, it died of neglect.
- FiveSquared 8y agoWhich kid were you in the board cast?
- beat 8y agoYou mean broadcast? Oh man, my manager wouldn't allow me out of the kitchen when the press was there, for fear of me shooting my mouth off at a candidate. Luckily, the best takedown of a candidate was done by a customer - a PhD physics student who was a daily regular. At some point, GOP candidate Jack Kemp came in, with press in tow. He was touting his support for Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program. When he found an actual physics doctoral student, he asked what the student thought of it. Without blinking - and on national television - he said "The only physicists who think it will work are the ones getting paid to say it will work". It was beautiful.