Bagging Ice

IT WAS nominally, at least on paper, the idea of the century, if not the millennium. I regret that it was not mine, but rather that of two of my coworkers, the two ladies who do the cooking at our local senior center. We have, you see, an ice making machine, a machine the size of a refrigerator, from which small cubes of ice come cascading down from on high when one scoops out ice from below, triggering the new supply. And we use it every day, but only for filling the ice chest for placement next to the iced tea container in the dining room. Daily the vault remains filled with the valuable stuff, and daily the capacity for production goes unexploited. The senior center is constantly engaged in fund raising, bake sales, diner dances and the like, so, why not? Noting that the local grocery stores all sold bags of ice for about two and a half dollars per, why not? We could bag our own ice, sell it for, oh, say, a dollar per, drive all competition out of business, and reap a lucrative profit for our ever cash hungry senior center. Nothing could be more obvious. All summer long the idea languished on the director's desk, victimized by administrative entropy, while down at the food mart the expensive bags flowed out of their machine, into the ice chests of beach goers..and our grand idea languished. Finally came fall, and fall fest. Out of patience, I went over the local director's head, up to the top of the administrative hierarchy, and presented the idea. It passed. All fall fest long orders came rolling in. We had signs posted all over town, and we could not keep up the supply with the demand, to the point where we had to take down the signs and just go on word of mouth. A hundred dollars flowed in in a flurry. Our freezer, regrettably, had room for only about twenty five bags. We kept bagging. Fall fest ended, and we looked forward to a year 'round business, money rolling in, one dollar at a time. Then came the crushing news. The regional director had misunderstood. she had assumed the business was to be temporary, not to extend beyond the fest. No further explanation given. something about sales taxes, a ridiculous notion, since all other fund raising sales we conducted tax exempt. We three kitchen workers sliced open the plastic bags, and back into the ice making machine went the ice, and with it, our hopes and dreams. I'm a retired teacher, a volunteer at the senior center. rarely if ever have I met an administrator of any sort whom I respected. Nary a principle, assistant principle, nor Department head, nor college dean. Assholes and reprobates, all. Paper pushers perpetually covering ass, protecting bloated salaries. I have taught at colleges, junior colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools...and now this. Nary a brain in the bunch. It brings to mind the time a high school principle summoned me to his office, and asked why on earth I was teaching my history classes that Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian, as if his deism were my fault. I keep thinking of the money our little senior center could have made by now. And the number of Americans who unnecessarily go about their business believing that Thomas Jefferson was a devout evangelical Christian. They're the same dilettante philistine rabble who spend a dollar and a half too much for a bag of ice, and, tragically, always will, notwithstanding the unrewarded brilliance of our kitchen crew. Administration is where good ideas go to die.