Remember Floyd Bolin's chocolate milk, kindness

Jim Clifford writes:
I remember Mr. Bolin's kindness to kids going home from religious instruction at St. Mary's on Saturday mornings. In the winter, he always had hot chocolate milk available for free to those of us passing by on our way home from "religion." At our young ages, the fact that he wasn't Catholic never occurred to us, but in those days that was still an issue with some people around Alexandria. On both sides there were needless fears, resentments and petty malicious attitudes.

I can recall Carl Johnson working there on those Saturdays. He was Catholic, but I don't think that was the motivating force behind a simple and welcome act of kindness on a cold Saturday morning. Funny, when I read the piece on Mr. Bolin's life, and Carl Johnson's name appeared, I immediately got a mental image of being in the back of the dairy, just indoors from the alley, and seeing Mr. Johnson standing there in black boots, white trousers, a white T-shirt and a white apron, as someone passed out the hot chocolate. It was one of those really vivid images that gives me the notion that I actually dug up a still shot from a memory that is real. Carl Johnson's daughter, Claudia, was a classmate of ours in the class of 1965.

That piece on Mr. Bolin's life was really fascinating. My condolences to Mike, our classmate, and his older brother Stan, who was a classmate of my older brother, John.