It’s summer, down the shore, in 1948, which would make me three years old. If there’s an east wind, aka sea breeze, you can hear the ocean murmuring half a block away, through the back screen door. It’s morning, so the Jersey Shore sun streams through the kitchen window. Great Aunt Ellie–who died a year later–sets before me a bowl of Wheatena, sweetened with Domino dark brown sugar and lightened with top milk, from bottles delivered earlier to the front porch by the Borden’s milk truck. The scent of roasted granulated wheat, released by boiling, wafts from the bowl. As the yellow box with the blue diagonal stripe proclaims (though I was still too young to read it), Wheatena- “Tastes Good”.
For a time period, a place, a setting, a food, to be elevated to the pantheon of sacred memories, details are needed. The cooked breakfast cereal Wheatena is in that revered status. Largely because it tastes the same after these many decades.
At the time, Wheatena was made not far away, in my home town of Rahway. The white masonry factory, known as Wheatenaville, sat across the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks from the sprawling Merck’s complex. Wheatenaville was the centerpiece of a green oasis–a parklike setting of mature trees, happily incongruous in the dominant industrial barrens of the area. Depending on wind direction, one could smell the secret process of roasting wheat when walking home from school, or just traipsing or bicycling about town.

Next to the 1907-built multi-story factory, which resembled a mansion, the elevated water tower stood, capped with a square tank–a giant reproduction of the Wheatena box, visible over the trees and telephone poles lining Grand Street–a beacon, revealing the source of that most pleasant industrial aroma.

For 60 years, the breakfast cereal–which originated on Mulberry Street in New York, in 1879–was a favorite, and best smelling, of the many products made in Rahway, New Jersey. These included Quinn and Boden books , Merck drugs and pills , Purolator oil filters, Regina floor polishers (once the maker of music boxes), Dr. Lyons Tooth Powder, Monte Christo hats, and Tingley rubber wear.
In 1967, up in Maine, I noticed the yellow box no longer honored, on its back, the name of my hometown. Instead it granted the honor to Kansas City, headquarters for some unknown (to me) outfit called Sterling Mills. Back home, Wheatenaville had become a warehouse for Quinn and Boden Books, the yellow-box water tower painted over in white, with the Q and B logo.
I since learned that Wheatena was being made in Highspire, Pennsylvania. Corporate ownership has gone through a dizzying array of changes, exacerbated by acquisitions and mergers. Most recent owner of the brand appears to be Homestat, of Dublin, Ohio–neither my home state nor home town. The box has mutated from yellow to orange,  the blue stripe into an arch, still–like its contents–tasteful. Yes, through it all, it tasted the same, whether during leisurely summers at the Shore, or on chilled winter mornings in Rahway before walking the mile to Lincoln School.
And even out here in Washington state, it could be always found on a supermarket shelf, in the area of Quaker Oats and Cream of Wheat. But then, around the year 2010, it vanished. But thankfully, the Wheatena desert was lifted when I learned you could order the product on Amazon, on your very own laptop. And have it delivered to your doorstep, as was once done with milk. And Dugan’s Bread. And fresh eggs. And produce from the Rahway Public Market on Cherry Street.–all vanished services, that didn’t require a laptop of a smart phone. I’d just as soon have those services back, and be able to buy one box of Wheatena at a time from the neighborhood super market.
Yes, but times change. But not the taste of Wheatena! That is, until last week when I opened my 4-box one-year-supply. As always, I brought one half-cup of the cereal stirred into a saucepan filled with one cup of salted water, bringing it to a slow boil for five or six minutes. But something wasn’t right. It came out too stiff. And there was something about the taste. Like they’d added some unknown grain. It wasn’t unpleasant, just different. And not really an improvement. I didn’t get sick, so rat poison might be ruled out, added by some careless worker or machine in the mixing area, or surreptitiously by some twisted individual.
Or maybe it had just sat too long in some automated Amazon warehouse.
This morning I boiled up another batch. It was better, but something still wasn’t right. Perhaps next week it’ll be better yet, and become the new normal. As Amazon has become. And smart phones. And soon, robot driven cars and trucks…and maybe airplanes? Now there could be a new challenge for Boeing, but it seems they’ve got enough self-inflicted troubles on their hands.
Personally, I think the world could be a more congenial place if we retained more of the “old normal.” But to question the present-day holy trinity of digitalization, convenience, and innovation could brand one at best a hopeless old fogey. Or at worse, a heretic. Are there any other such heretics out there?