Keys to the Promised Land

For my Senior year position, I was selected as the Proprietor/Manager of the Promised Land. Perhaps if the Priests and Brothers could have seen the results of my management skills for that year in advance, they might have chosen someone else.

Ah, the Promised Land, home of the grape Nehis, Stewart sandwiches and all things – candy. Stewart sandwiches, those culinary wonders in sealed cellophane wrappers. Only four minutes from a freezer hockey puck state to a dried out, tasteless undersized sandwich that it was, thanks to that stainless steel box oven with the rotary timer. Still my customers could not get enough of them.

I doubt if the Promised Land broke even that year, much less made a profit. Perhaps because I, like other teenagers, often gave into peer pressure or perhaps I had yet not learned how to say no, I found myself making some less than “profitable” decisions. One of my first poor decisions was allowing some guys to “run a tab”. More than one guy promised to gladly pay me tomorrow for a Stewart sandwich today. Looking back perhaps another unwise decision was to loan out the keys to the Promised Land to my fellow Senior classmates for some “after hours” snacking. I always received a guarantee that monies would be left for anything eaten, but it often seemed that there was less food but not more money in the snack bar when I opened it up the next day.

The real reason for this story concerns the time that I lost the keys to the Promised Land. As per the posted sign, it was time to open the snack bar. I looked and searched but could not locate the keys. Classmates were in the gym working up a thirst for those cold RC colas and root beer sodas in the cooler. Patrons were gathering around the door to the Promised Land, but still I could not find those keys. Hours went by, hours turned into a day, one day turned into two. Peer pressure began to grow. It started out with little comments and grumblings and nearly turned into a tar and feathering. I was the most despised guy at the school. My classmates needed a candy fix and I could not do anything for them. It got so bad that I hurried from place to place with my head down in the hopes of not being noticed or confronted. In fear, I avoided informing the Priests and Brothers of the situation in hopes that it would get resolved before they even found out. The pressure got so bad that I had to do the unthinkable. I would have to ask the Priests and Brothers to issue me another key. So I marched into the office of the “Dean of Men” to confess my sin and request a key. I assured him that I had conducted a thorough search of the entire school and grounds, having done everything humanly possible. But in an unexpected turn of events, Fr. Krah refused to give me another key and told me I had to find the one I was given. It was a death sentence. He was sending me back out to face the general population who had been without snacks for several days now. I decided to retire to my room in the old wing to hide out and avoid all my classmates. Since I was stuck in my room with lots of time on my hands, I decided to do something unthinkable – catch up on my studies! I reached up into my book shelve to pull down a book I had not studied in awhile, lo and behold, the keys to the Promised Land had been closed up in the book. Jubilation, the snack bar was once again open, having truly lived up to it name.

A footnote to this story, can be seen in the 1973 Spring Edition of the “Bellefontaine”, the school’s newspaper. There was a “Last Will and Testament” section that witty editors created for each outgoing Senior classmen. Someone wrote the following for me: “Jack Cominoli leaves the keys to the Promised Land to Dave Holadak — if he can find them.”