THE
BLUE BOX (Recycled Ideas)
by Don Cox
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I was sitting in the Cafe Cosy in Buckingham the other day
eating some of their wonderful french fries. These are made
from freshly peeled potatoes and they have that personal
immediate feel about them. I'm sure there must be a little
old grandmother sitting out in the kitchen peeling potatoes
and dropping the peels into a slop bucket to take home to
the pigs. At least, that's how I imagine it, they couldn't
be that good without a personal touch. I was contrasting
these fries with the substance that masquerades as fries
at B.J.'s a couple of blocks away. B.J.'s fries come from
an immense factory somewhere in the industrial heartland
of North America. Tons of potatoes are machine peeled every
hour and then sliced and cooked in a million gallon tank.
When they come out of that tank, they are no longer potatoes,
they are starch sticks with an attitude. Then they're frozen
and shipped to a hundred thousand restaurants like B.J.s
where they get thawed, warmed up a bit, and served. They
taste like little brown styptic sticks, the kind you use
to stop the bleeding when you cut yourself shaving.
So there I sat in the Cafe Cosy revelling in my fries,
and watching the gas company dig up the street. Suddenly
I was struck with a brilliant inspiration. What we need
in Buckingham is a pneumatic distribution network, and now
is the perfect time to install one, while the gas company
has the streets dug up anyhow. Pneumatics was a big item
in Paris and London in the 1880s. It's just a network of
tubes of various sizes with a controlled vacuum but it carried
mail quickly and efficiently and was the equal of the fax
any day. You wrote your message and put it in a little round
cylinder about the size of a flashlight. You lifted the
gate valve on the pneumatic tube, slipped in the message
cylinder and "S-S-L-U-RRR-P-P", it was gone, and it would
drop on the addressee's desk a minute or two later. It was
a fabulous system. Just imagine if we had such a system
in Buckingham; I could go to B.J.s and order french fries,
a call would be made, a package would be prepared at Cafe
Cosy and "S-S-L-U-R-R-P", into the pneumatic tube it would
go. A minute later it would arrive at my table at B.J.s,
the ultimate in texture, taste, colour and warmth.
Of course there's another side to the coin, there always
is. At the Cafe Cosy dessert is a lost concept. They look
at you blankly when you mention it. If you press the point
they will grudgingly produce a piece of apple pie. It has
the texture of caulking compound, and is lightly flavoured
with apple extract. What a contrast with the dessert at
B.J.s. It must be admitted that at B.J.s they really UNDERSTAND
dessert. Amongst other delights, they serve chocolate cheese
cake from your wildest dreams, lovingly produced by John
Kane's own fair hand.
So there you have it, a clear case of synergy in the making.
Cafe Cosy's french fries are clearly destined for a wider
future, and B.J.'s chocolate cheese cake should have an
opportunity for a debut on the world stage. Of course there
are numerous other places where a pneumatic transportation
system would produce a needed two way exchange. Let me see.....what
would be a good example? How about a connection between
City Hall and some local supplier, a hardware store should
be a good choice. That's it!! Of course, it's obvious!!
Connect City Hall with Jim Tremblay's hardware, and they
can exchange barbs.
