Breakfast like it's 1963...sort of

June 9, 10:15 AMDenver Dining ExaminerStan Dyer

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White bread no longer has the same effect on me. 

The sweet smell of June always reminds me of waking up one summer morning as a child and remembering it’s Summer Vacation and there’s no school today, tomorrow or for three more months!  Yahoooty!  The first task of the day, (since my mom was a single mom and had to work), was to make breakfast.  Even when we were so young we required a sitter, many of us still handled this important task ourselves.  We loved it.  

I grew up in a time when diet referred only to weight loss and the only way to do it is was to starve oneself.  This was before health concerns over saturated fats, over-processed foods, and sedentary lifestyles.  I tasted cyclamates before they caused cancer in laboratory rats, ate potato chips cooked in cottonseed oil, and remember commercials touting how Wonder Bread “helps build strong bodies twelve ways!”  Yet, back then, the main course for breakfast was still sugar- plain, white sugar.  

Some kids were lucky and they would have doughnuts or cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  For us poorer kids, we got sugar-coated cereal covered with lots and lots of whole milk.  Even when parents tried to cut down on the sugar we ate by buying Kix, Cheerios, Corn Flakes or Post Toasties, we were still able to turn them into a diabetic treat using the ubiquitous sugar bowl on everyone’s kitchen table.  The sugar did not always stick well to the flakes, but we would just add more and wait to enjoy the milky, sugary treat we created at the bottom of the bowl.  Sugar was “The” breakfast food of the 60’s and manufacturers came up with lots of new ways to serve it up like adding tiny, dehydrated marshmallows, and putting really cool toy surprises right inside the box.  

I can remember when common kid’s cereals of today were brand new.  I remember Captain Crunch when he first came out, “All ashore who’s going ashore.  Get Captain Crunch at your grocery store!”  I also remember when Lucky Charms only had four shapes.  I remember similar cereals that tasted about the same, but just could not attract a buying audience like “Quisp”, “Quake”, and “Freakies”.  We also enjoyed Quaker Oatmeal, Maypo, Cream of Wheat, and Malt-O-Meal, but with lots of sugar on top and usually only on the weekends since that required too much time to cook.  We were encouraged to eat a “balanced” breakfast that included fruit, juice and toast.  Fruit?  Naw! Juice, maybe, but Toast?  Yes! and sometimes that could be the entire meal.  

Back then, no self-respecting kid would go near wheat bread.  That was mostly because the wheat bread of the 60’s was crap.  But, we loved the white bread and it was so, so good lightly toasted and buttered with enough of that artery-clogging wonder food so that its melty goodness turned the bread almost soggy with flavor.  Geez, I could eat about a half a loaf of that stuff by myself.  One day, a neighbor turned me on to Cinnamon Toast.  That mixture sprinkled on the aforementioned white toast was just about as near ambrosia as any kid ever got, rivaling even raised doughnuts in flavor.

I never really forgot those days or how much we all enjoyed breakfast, but things have changed a bit.  Now, I make my own “Soy Milk”, (My friends would have kicked my butt for just mentioning that in the 60’s), I eat only whole grains, and when I use a butter-type spread, you have to know it is something designed to be healthier.  I hardly ever spread fat on my food anymore, but, when I do, chances are good it is on a sunny June morning like this one where the doves and robins are singing to the wind and the air smells just as it did when we moved into our new house on Dexter Street back in 1963.  The food may be as different as the times, but not even that can change the taste of those memories.  Just the smell almost makes me want to grab my glove, hop on my bike and head down to City Park to play baseball with my friends.  No matter what you had for breakfast this morning, it can’t possibly taste as good as my memories, but, unless you were there, you will never know, and that is one of the beauties of aging.