LIVING ON: Sliced Bread

There I was making lunch, when I was hit with an epiphany. I was required to slice my own bread, having most graciously received a solid loaf amongst an assortment of food pantry items. We get so used to convenience in the ‘developed’ world, that it’s easy to get lost and edged ever closer to becoming toast. Running back to my computer where I have been slavishly trying to extract my way out of a predicament brought on by a system that has not fully extracted slavery, I attempted to confirm my theory that…sliced bread must have been created just in time for the bread lines of the Great Depression!

Low and behold the timing was right for the invention of the bread slicing machine. After some stops and starts including a fire, bread slicing became official in 1928, just in time for the crash of 1929 that lasted into the 1930’s, the period which we define as the ‘Great Depression’. During this period America blessed the world with ‘Wonder Bread’, which shipped globally. I wonder how far and wide it traveled and what native grains cast a skeptical shadow on this early counterpart of ‘Subway Sneaker Bread’? I wonder how many of that generation concluded that ‘this Man-na, was not from heaven’?

The eyes of that generations descendants are unfortunately looking at America askant again, as our ‘bread loving’ President tries to sell his version of ‘wonder’ to the wonderment of many. As they say, history may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes. Past generations had far less to forewarn them of the coming of bread lines, no less a personification of a Great Depression, in a President to help them to descend in to one.  

I think it was pretty great to obtain yesterday’s solid loaf, partially the ironic outcome of the recent great Amercian flawed attempt at greatness. For too many people, for too long survival shouldn’t have to be achieved in spite of a widening gap in income inequality or as the outcome of a trade or health emergency debacle. Like them, I’m still waiting for America to show me something GREATER than sliced bread. If all else fails, I will satisfy myself with passing the bread and banning the bombs…AND ‘holding off on the baloney’, please!… and thank you very much!

Historical notes, laced with cynicism: Rohwedder’s newfangled contraption was greeted with an enthusiastic report in the July 6, 1928, edition of the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune, which noted that while some people might find sliced bread “startling,” the typical housewife could expect “a thrill of pleasure when she first sees a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellows.

Moral: We shouldn’t be afraid of equality, unless its doled out to the 99% in smaller and smaller slices.