Between Thanksgiving through Christmas and on to New Year’s Day and even beyond is a time when food galore for many folks is available for eating.

Friday, December 07, 2001

Between Thanksgiving through Christmas and on to New Year’s Day and even beyond is a time when food galore for many folks is available for eating. It’s a time for gaining weight, ignoring diets, getting that bloated feeling, and celebrating the holiday season with extra helpings of whatever entrees and desserts are available. To counteract this seasonal custom, I’m proposing the concept of the Clean Plate Club.

Here’s a club with no dues, no officers, no meetings, no newsletter, or anything else except common sense, However, there’s a club motto, plus several logical rules.

Here’s the motto: &uot;Take what you can eat, eat what you take, and end up with a clean plate.&uot;

This motto is based in part on my frugal grandmother’s principle intended to control the food budget. Also, she had another saying based on not letting your eyes get bigger than your stomach.

The rules for this club are based on just five suggestions. First, for those folks on a diet, follow it! Second, take no seconds. Third, use the small sampling concept to taste a certain food item to find out if it’s really worth eating. Fourth, there’s an old saying which comes in handy in so many other situations. &uot;If in doubt, don’t.&uot; And, fifth, just don’t play with or waste food.

Wasting food reminds me of an incident which took place when I was serving with a U.S. Army unit near Inchon, Korea, in 1946.

One of the men in the unit said he was going to take some garbage out to the dump ground. He asked if I wanted to ride along and see something really different. Right at the time I was off duty and welcomed the opportunity to visit the nearby village and its dump ground which was also being used by the U.S. Army.

Incidentally, the term dump ground is now out of style. Today, we call these disposal sites sanitary landfills.

There were several trucks from other units at the dump ground. And watching the unloading process was a large group of Korean women and children, plus an American soldier armed with a carbine.

As soon as one of the trucks was unloaded, the Koreans would move in on the fresh pile of garbage to glean whatever was edible and/or usable. These people were desperately poor. The riches of food and other useful odds and ends, such as tin cans, bottles and other goodies discarded by the wasteful Americans was a real treasure trove for the local residents.

The soldier assigned to guard the dump ground would move around rather slowly and tell the Koreans to get away from the garbage pile. Those local folks would respect his command. Then, as soon as the guard wandered off to the other side of the disposal site where another military truck was unloading trash, those people would move right back to the garbage pile to continue the gleaning process.

I felt sorry for that garbage dump ground guard. It was obvious he wasn’t happy at all with the assignment. Also, the local folks knew his carbine wasn’t loaded.

Thus, what was taking place at this location between the village and the rice paddies was a real charade between the guard and the Koreans.

What I saw that day and several later occasions will always serve as an example of American wastefulness and military stupidity to even attempt to deprive those Koreans of something to eat.

There’s another memory I have based on the clean plate concept. Years ago I was visiting in the Hollywood Hills part of Los Angeles. This particular neighborhood near Sunset Boulevard was then a haven for hippies and the location of many restaurants with outdoor dining facilities.

The hippies would stand out on the sidewalks and watch people eat their meals. Then, after the people left a table, and before the busy waitresses could clear away the dishes and leftovers to set up for new customers, the hippies would quickly make their move. They would dash to the table and consume the bread and as much of the food left on the plates as possible before being ordered to leave the premises.

I’ve always had a deep feeling of compassion for the starving Koreans and the dump ground guards, but not for those stupid hippies.

Feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays in the Tribune.