To "throw in the towel" (as Susan points out here) comes from the world of boxing, when either the boxer or his cornerman decides that he’s had enough and tosses the towel in the ring to let the referee know that’s it. It’s his way of saying "No más," as Roberto Durán said when he was fighting "Sugar Ray" Leonard in 1980. We would look at it as saying "I give up," "I quit," or "I’ve had enough."

All this talk about boxing makes me think of Howard Cosell, sports announcer for ABC from the mid-’50’s until the mid-’80’s, when he was fired after his book, I Never Played The Game, was published. Howard once said "I’ve been called arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. And, of course, I am." Yes, he was all those things, but we liked him anyway. He was one of my birthday twins…

Linda runs Stream of Consciousness Saturday, and during Jasnuary also runs Just Jot It January.

Now a word about pastries and baked goods, baked with care by County Fair.

Once upon a time I worked as a production supervisor at a food company on the Northwest side of Chicago. It was called Newly Weds Foods, because one of their early products was an ice cream cake roll. We made the cake, then sent it to one of the local dairies who would extrude a layer of ice cream on it, then roll the whole thing up. Effectively, it was the marriage of ice cream and cake, thus the name.

Newly Weds made the aforementioned cake and English muffins (with and without raisins) for sale in grocery stores, but the larger part of the business was involved with making batter mixes and breaders for chicken and fish, as well as making cracker meal. It was the first company in the country to make panko, which we sold as Japanese Bread Crumbs. All the equipment to make it was imported from Japan. The way the bread was baked involved putting the raw dough in a box with metal plates on either side, then electrocuting it. The resulting loaves were dried out and run through a machine that shredded the bread and dropped it on a conveyor that ran through an oven to toast the crumbs. They then fell into a storage tank and were bagged on the next floor down.

The company was run by a man named Charles, who took over from his father, who still showed up every day and watched product being made. (Charles’s brother was the data processing department, but he was also a musician, and he and his band rehearsed in an empty storage room in the plant. The only song I ever heard them play was "Just What I Needed" by The Cars.)

Charles had a habit of showing up in the middle of the night and raising hell with the third shift supervisors, of which I was one. He was kind of a tough customer, but he had a good side as well: one night when he was there, a guy I had fired showed up and, in a drunken rage, tried to stab me. He did manage to break my glasses and leave a nasty cut on my back. Charles was the one who took me to the hospital and got me patched up, saw to it that the guy was arrested, and provided an attorney when we went to court. Didn’t pay for new glasses… but that was all right.

I finally found a new job and left the company. He was upset that I only gave a week’s notice, but we parted on pretty good terms.

After I left, the company really grew, largely due to his vision. In addition to batters and breaders, he got into the business of capsicums and flavor packets for the casual restaurant business. They’re all over the world now. Made me kind of sorry I left.

Anyway, I was browsing through Facebook and found their company page, and I learned that Charles passed away before Christmas. Even though he and I had a somewhat contentious relationship, I had to admire the guy for building the company well beyond anything I had imagined, and I won’t forget how he took care of me. May he rest in peace.

Linda is the creator of Stream of Consciousness Saturday, and also of Just Jot It January.