I t’s funny what memories of childhood stick with you as clearly as if they happened yesterday. I remember a night when I was in second grade, when the school I was attending had its annual fundraising carnival, and part of the festivities featured a cake walk— a long table full of the most indescribably delicious-looking pastries and confections I’d ever seen in my life.
About halfway down that table was a chocolate cake donated by Mrs. Campbell, who had the deserved reputation as the best cook in our neighborhood. At that tender age, I’d not known what it feels like in your guts to covet a thing with every fiber of your being, but I coveted that cake. That cake was mine, and I knew it as surely as I knew the Yankees were going to win the next World Series.
I told myself that I was going to win it to make my parents proud, and I imagined us sitting around the kitchen table, me basking in the praise they’d be lavishing for contributing this scrumptious, heavenly dessert to our Sunday dinner. But I also knew that I wanted to eat that cake, and I could almost taste the rich, velvety frosting on my tongue as I plopped down 25 cents from my allowance to take part in the first walk — which involved everyone trooping around a path of numbered squares to Dean Martin music. When the music stopped, if you were on a winning square, you got to pick something from the table as your prize.
It took me eight tries and all my week’s allowance before I finally landed on a winner, and every time I came up puny I held my breath in agony, hoping that nobody would claim Mrs. Campbell’s cake. They didn’t (idiots!) and when the cakewalk lady called out my number, I fairly sprinted to the table and scooped up that cake, which I promptly dropped on the floor.
The thoughts of what that cake might have tasted like have haunted me for over 50 years — one of the great missed opportunities of my life— but I’m a sucker for school bake sales because I always hoped to find a chocolate cake at one of them that would equal the imagined perfection of the one I’d smashed. Sadly, I never did, but I married a wonderful lady whose baking has kept me from feeling that my youthful clumsiness caused me to miss nirvana by this much.
If you believe the Massachusetts Board of Public Health, however, dropping that cake was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because it could have set me on a path of unhealthy eating that would eventually lead to morbid obesity. This August, new guidelines set by the MBPH will go into effect that target fried foods, sugary drinks and other tasty treats by limiting the kids’ access to them at school — not only during school hours, but 24/7. Which would mean no bake sales, even those in the evening put on by PTAs. It would also affect concessions sold to raise money in other ways, like hot dogs, soda and ice cream at sporting events, and door-to-door candy sales if students are involved or potential purchasers. “Clearly, it’s to really create an environment in schools where kids have an opportunity to make choices among healthy options,” DPH Medical Director Dr. Lauren Smith told TheBostonChannel.
The Massachusetts guidelines closely mirror regulations already in place in California and New York City. It has the folks who depend on selling candy, pastries, etc., to fund extracurricular activities, like marching bands and chess clubs, scrambling to find a new way to raise money (light bulbs? ear muffs?). And it has many parents, who say they ought to be able to decide what their children eat outside of school, fuming. I know which side of the argument I come down on (Let Me Eat Cake!), but you might be wondering what all this has to do with us in the Garden State. That’s simple, dear readers. There are already movements afoot to do the very same thing in New Jersey, and you know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time before we jump on that Big Nanny bandwagon. We just hate to see anyone regulating other people’s behavior to a greater extent than we are. It makes us jealous. So if I’m ever gonna find a match for Mrs. Campbell’s chocolate cake at a school bake sale, I suppose I’d better hurry.
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the state’s attempt to grab the COAH housing funds that haven’t been used in a couple of towns in our coverage area — Marlboro and Monroe. I urged those towns to do whatever they had to do before the July deadline to keep that money from disappearing into the black hole of the New Jersey general fund. That’s why I’m a little miffed that I’m not getting the appropriate, well-deserved credit for what happened in Monroe last week.
According to a story in the Sentinel — the Greater Media publication that covers the community — the Township Council took my advice and committed $6.7 million of the $9.7 million that stands to be forfeited to build an affordable housing complex for low- and moderate-income veterans. It also committed $8.2 million to other affordable housing-related projects, and established a trust fund to protect the $3 million or so that is expected to be collected from developers next year.
Communities like Monroe have been collecting this COAH affordable housing money from developers for a long time, and you have to wonder why they waited until the last minute, when they were under the gun, to do something with it. But there’ll be a lot of veterans, and their families, who’ll say better late than never.
No one expects the state to take this lying down, and there’ll likely be a battle, but I give Monroe kudos, even if they didn’t mention the crucial role I played in the process. I’m not in this for the glory but hey, credit where credit is due.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].

