Back in the early seventies, I was trying to launch my career as a professional writer (including working with Jack Kirby) and also attend classes at U.C.L.A. I am in no way against higher education for some — perhaps, most — but not all. I didn't learn a damned thing at college, especially because they kept insisting I take courses that in no way related to my chosen career.
For that and other reasons I must have explained here somewhere, I decided to quit U.C.L.A., a decision that didn't sit entirely well with my father. He understood the logic. You theoretically go to college to get a better job and college was stopping me from getting a better job. But he still felt a little uncomfortable about it so as a compromise, I agreed to continue my education by taking some courses at Santa Monica College where I also didn't learn anything of value to me and eventually left.
I liked S.M.C. more than I'd liked U.C.L.A., partly because I spent a lot less time in its classrooms. I also liked that S.M.C. seemed less serious and friendlier…and being only a mile and a half from the ocean, it had a feeling of going not to school but to the beach. Some students of both genders dressed accordingly and it felt very casual. There was also this vending machine there that fascinated me.
They had the usual bank of machines that sold coffee and soft drinks and candy…but there was this one machine that sold sandwiches. I'm going to need to insert two images here so I can explain how this machine worked…
On the right there, you see a little packet of Buddig Honey Roasted Turkey. I'm sure you've seen these or something similar in your local supermarkets. Each packet contains just enough lunch meat to make one thin sandwich. Packets like this one were the basis for this machine. We didn't have the Buddig brand then. It was some other company but the chopped, reconstituted, full-of-additives products were identical.
So now look at the vending machine at left. You've seen these all over. They dispense chips and candy and cookies and other snacks, each labelled with its own price. You put in the proper amount of change, push one or more buttons to tell the machine which item you're buying and it dispenses one of it to you, dropping it into a bin at the bottom.
Well, the machine at S.M.C. was like this but it was refrigerated…and on the first row, you could select a single-serving packet of beef, a single-serving packet of chicken, a single-serving packet of turkey, a single-serving packet of something they claimed was corned beef (it wasn't) or a single-serving packet of ham.
The packets on the next row down each contained two slices of bread. You could select white, white, wheat, rye or sourdough. I remember there were always two slots for white bread.
Then the next row down had add-ons: A packet with one or two slices of American cheese, one of Swiss, one of Cheddar, and then a packet with sliced tomato and one of lettuce leaves.
The next row was condiments: Little packets of ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, mayo, hot sauce, etc. And then the bottom row held single-serving bags of chips — potato chips, corn chips, pretzels, etc. Since the chips were the most breakable, they must have put them on the bottom row to minimize how far they'd fall to drop into the bin.
So all you had to do was purchase the components and assemble your sandwich. I don't recall the exact prices but it went something like this: You'd buy a packet of ham (25¢), a packet with two slices of rye bread (15¢), a packet with cheddar cheese (15¢), a packet of mustard (5¢) and a bag of Ruffles potato chips (20¢). In no time at all, you'd have a ham and cheese on rye with mustard and chips for eighty cents. Or whatever your sandwich of choice was that day.
I should add: If I'm off on the prices, I'll bet I'm over. It felt more like sixty cents. Some days if I was hungry, I might splurge, put in another quarter and double-up on the meat in my sandwich.
I was just fascinated with this invention. I'd buy a Pepsi from another machine and that's how I'd lunch every day I was at S.M.C., all the time thinking, "Wow. Whoever invented this is going to make a fortune. They'll have these everywhere!" And then I never saw another one again…anywhere. In fact, I think the one at S.M.C. disappeared from that campus before I did.
As you may know, I spent a lot of time at hospitals when my mother was ill and later when my lovely friend Carolyn was failing. It was a not uncommon situation for me to be there in the middle of the night, waiting for hours, needing something to eat. I learned where to find a bank of vending machines in every hospital to which either was ever admitted. I could not, however, find any real protein in any of them — just crackers and chips and sometimes pre-made sandwiches which had been there since the discovery of Penicillin.
One time in the Emergency Room at U.C.L.A. Medical Center, I found a machine that dispensed little cups of soup which one could purchase, then heat in a microwave oven nearby. I bought some Campbell's Chicken Noodle, peeled the lid off, put it in the microwave…and then noticed the sign that said the microwave was outta-order. Once more, U.C.L.A. had failed me. So often, in the wee small hours of the morning, I longed for that machine they had back at S.M.C. and wondered why that idea never caught on.